The Walls are Walking
by FallingStarXan
Summary: "Sometimes Marco had dreams of flying..." When an earnest young man becomes a trial patient in an experimental regenerative treatment, he finds himself witnessing the seeds of mankind's eventual near-extinction being sown... and, centuries in the future, humanity is left to face the consequences, but not without the help of a strangely gentle Titan found in the forest. JeanMarco.
1. Flying Dreams

**Author's Note: I know that I haven't finished my most recent fanfic for Persona 4, but I'm posting this just so that I can start getting it out there since I've been talking to a lot of people who wanted to read it. Anyway, this is a story full of sci-fi and drama and ruminations on humanity and so forth... My usual fare. It's on a sort of alternate continuity from the main timeline of SnK, and I'm trying to keep as many manga spoilers out as possible, but some might creep in anyway. Anyway, enjoy 'The Walls are Walking', my first Shingeki no Kyojin fanfic!**

**Attack on Titan belongs, of course, to Hajime Isayama.**

* * *

_ Sometimes I have dreams of flying. The center of the propulsive force is cinched around my waist, and it changes direction so abruptly that my legs have been numbed to nothingness, and every so often gravity grabs me back down again, but still, I feel like I'm as airborne as any bird or bat or bug. Utter, complete control in all three dimensions… or at least in theory, anyway. I'm clumsy, but I'm learning. I can hear someone grouching behind me to pick up the pace as branches whizz by my cheek, but when I turn and a pair of hands catch my wrists for a joint maneuver, it's the best feeling in the world. We're a team. _

_We're still a team when our swords get tangled up in the swing and miss the target. We're even still a team when we end up rolling together, sprawled out on the forest floor, with the instructor bawling at us to get off our asses and try again, to get it right, or we'll be scrubbing toilets all evening. We're a team because as I force my aching knees under me to lift my body and its heavy gear up, my partner slings my arm over his shoulder, helping me stand. And in the next pass, we perform the formation perfectly. The cleaved-off slice of wood goes flying into the underbrush. We land, our arms still linked, and he claps me on the back, saying in his loud, blunt, brash way, "That's the first time I've gotten this right with anyone! Marco, I swear you're my lucky charm."_

And then I wake up.

Before I open my eyes, I always hear the beeping of the monitoring machines at my bedside, reminding me of where I am. More often than not, my bandages are itchy. Nurse Karla changes them while I'm asleep, and the new ones take time getting used to. At first, they're crisp and dry, but the steam from the biochemical reactions roiling underneath in my wounds usually moisturizes them quickly.

"You're a very lucky young man," the doctors keep telling me, and they're right. I'm one of the first successful human trials of Titan Industries' rapid regrowth technology, the Regenerative Human Induction Matrix. So I make sure to smile to everyone, especially Doctor Jaeger, every time I have a visitor, to show how grateful I am, and how proud to be on the vanguard of research and medicine. My itchy bandages are a badge of my service to humanity. Someday, anyone will be able to grow back a whole half of their body, the same way I did. I'm honored to be a test subject here, and not just because it means I have a second chance at life. I'm here to give other people that chance too.

Someone is knocking at my door, and I say, "Come in!" in as cheerful a tone as my scratchy throat can muster. A large chunk of it is steamy new tissue, after all. Hannah, the intern who looks after me, enters with a little baggie full of fluids to hook up to my IV stand. "Lunch?" I say. It was meant to be a joke, but the young redhead doesn't smile. She has a stunned, almost catatonic expression.

Hannah had mentioned before that she volunteered at this hospital because her boyfriend was one of the patients in the RHIM labs. Like me, he lost a whole section of his body – in his case, the lower half. So I think I know what's bothering her. "How is Franz doing?" I croak.

"You're very lucky, Marco," Hannah tells me. Her words are high-pitched as if panicked, but her tone is blank, emotionless. "Has anyone ever told you that?"

I want other people to heal like I did, but it doesn't always work out that way. Hopes are high in this wing, but success rates are low.

"Hannah… I'm… so sorry." I reach out a shaky, bandaged arm in an attempt to console her. All I can hope is that she doesn't resent me for living while others die. "I thought his prognosis was good!"

She jerkily shakes her head. "They had to cancel the experiment… Something went wrong with the…" Then she clamps a palm over her mouth and a few tears trickle down her cheeks and over the back of her hand.

I watch her change the sac on my IV, with my most sympathetic eyes. Or, eye, rather.

"I just need to tell you that… I'm not going to be sticking around at the hospital much longer," Hannah adds. "So you'll be getting a new intern to take care of you after I leave. I'm sorry, Marco."

I don't blame her. Trauma latches onto location, sets of sensory details. It's the reason why, even though I can't remember my accident, certain things always trigger fear in me. The smell of rain on cobblestones. Earthquakes, or any other kind of vibration in the ground. It makes me wonder just what happened to me. No one here seems to know the details.

I motion her to come closer. She doesn't hear me the first time, and I have to repeat myself. "Why always an intern?" I manage to wheeze. It confuses me why an experimental procedure with such lucrative potential would be left so often to nurses and volunteers.

Hannah shrugs. "Maybe because we're expendable," she says. I'm pleased to see her making an attempt to joke, even if it comes out sounding dead serious. And I'm curious about what went wrong with Franz's treatment, that they would pull the plug on him so fast, but I don't get the chance to ask because she moves for the door, and my voice is spent for the day.

I wonder what my new caretaker will be like.

In time, the bandages are soaked with hot mist. I lift my arm up, checking to see if the lump of flesh at the end has developed more of a five-fingered form under its wrappings. Nothing so far, but I try to look on the bright side, which is the only side I can see out of, incidentally. There's a patch over my right socket. Underneath it, a new eye is forming. That's the miracle of RHIM – the Titan procedure, as it's commonly called. What's even more impressive is that all the energy for the reactions comes from sunlight, or, specifically, UV rays. That's right – the same things that cause sunburns and skin cancer can be used to regrow organs. Amazing, isn't it?

Every day, I'm sedated and wheeled into a special sterile room, wearing a lead blanket over my uninjured parts, and then all the bandages come off. Four hours of exposure under a high-powered black light. That's all my body needs for another day's worth of regrowth.

I don't get much sleep otherwise, so it's under the black light that I usually have my flying dreams.

* * *

Jean Kirschtein had his swords up and his trigger fingers were just itching to send out the 3DMG cables to the nearest tree. Not _towards_ the Titan that was currently stomping through the forest underneath their tree, mind you. No, that was certainly not the direction than Jean was yearning for. The suicidal idiot right next to him, however…

"Why are we just sitting here?" Eren Jaeger demanded, his face a rictus of constipated rage. "The Aberrant that nearly killed Astrid is right below us! If we don't kill it, our inaction could cost us a life!"

Or spare one. "Remind me who's in charge here," said Jean, under his breath.

Technically, no one was, but among the newer recruits of the Recon Corps, there was an unspoken hierarchy. Whoever had the most Titan kills was the _de facto_ leader. Eren had an enormous count from his rampages as a Titan, of course, but Jean refused to acknowledge that fact. After all, stomping around punching things that were at the moment far weaker than you didn't take much skill. And with the wounded Astrid at none, and Eren at just one (as a human), Jean was pretty much the boss.

"I can see its neck! It would be an easy kill from this angle!" The boy lifted a hand to his mouth, ready to bite down. "If we don't want to take risks, I could just turn into a Titan and rip it apart!"

"Who's. In. Charge here?" Jean repeated, savoring the words.

"I am," said a voice from above.

Jean gulped. Of course, it had to be _this_ guy, come to rain on his parade. The one whose self-proclaimed job was to never let Eren out of his sight. And apparently he was making good on this promise.

Captain Levi came whirling down like a buzz saw. Below them, the naked body turned sharply, the blank eyes lifting to see death raining from above. The Aberrant might have been faster than most Titans, but it had never met Levi before.

Most Titans that met Captain Levi only met him once.

The twin blades easily sliced through the Titan's neck and hewed off a large notch of flesh. It had always unnerved Jean how the Titans rarely made a sound when they were killed. You would expect a scream or a wail, as from any slain beast, but Titans seemed disconnected from their bodies. They just fell, like a gentle, welcoming sleep had hit them, and then they slowly decayed into smoke.

Levi swung himself back up and slid to an easy halt on the branch that the tiny squad was huddling on. He gave them all low-lidded stares before pointing through the forest with one of his blades. "I could have sworn," he told them, "that the rear right flank was that way."

"W-we got separated from the group!" squeaked Astrid. "And it's all my fault! That Titan smacked me into a tree and the other two stopped to help and…" She clapped a fist over her heart. "I am a complete failure as a soldier, sir! Please punish me as you see fit!"

_I didn't stop because I was being selfless_, Jean thought. _I stopped because I'm a selfish bastard who can't handle a little sacrifice from other people, because it brings up too many bad memories. So I did it for my own good_.

"Do you know what a failure as a soldier looks like, Leeds?" Levi sheathed his swords and stood over the injured young woman. "Dead." He leaned down and looked Astrid Leeds in the eye. "Are you dead yet?"

"N-no sir!" shouted Astrid, struggling to stand.

Levi nodded and turned to Eren. "We'll have a fresh horse ready for you when you reach the formation. Kirschtein will carry Leeds back to the supply wagons in the center squadron. That's where we're putting the injured soldiers, where it's most heavily guarded."

"But…" Eren looked shocked. "How did you find us all the way out here, Captain?"

"I used my nose," said Levi cryptically. He took a running leap off the branch and began to speed off through the canopy.

Jean hefted the wounded girl onto his back, scowling. "Come on," he said. "We'd better catch up or else we're Titan food."

"Are you sure you can take her to the supply wagons all by yourself?" asked Eren, pausing with his fingers on the cable triggers. "It's a heavy load."

"Screw you," Jean muttered, and flung himself, with Astrid clinging to his shoulders, into space.

This second scouting mission into the wilds enclosed by the forsaken Wall Maria had not gone as badly as the one in which Annie, in Titan form, had attacked the squad and torn their formation to pieces, but they were still getting hammered by Titans from all sides. They were a smaller group, more suited for stealth, but there was always the fear of the other two Titan Shifters exploding out of the trees and smashing them to pieces. The only thing that kept them going was the hope of reaching Eren's hometown, Zhiganshina.

The whole purpose of the mission was for Eren to reach his basement, and discover what secrets his father had left for him there about the Titans and the power to transform into one. Which was why it looked so bad when Eren had been separated from the main contingent, along with Jean and this Astrid girl, who did not seem to have the emotional stamina to be in the Recon Corps in the first place.

Jean couldn't bring himself to resent the injured girl on his back, however, for endangering the mission. It was the Titans' fault, as always.

They were making good time flying through the trees, even with the extra load that Jean's 3DMG had to bear. Jean was one of the most skilled of the new recruits with his gear, second only to Mikasa, even if his fighting ability was only average.

"Jean!" Astrid pounded on his back weakly, trying to get his attention. "I think I saw a black flare behind us, to the right! There's an Aberrant that way!"

"Good thing we're headed away from it, then!" Jean shot back, managing to get a decent slingshot effect from a pair of thick giants. The trees in this forest were tall as buildings, perfect for the maneuver gear.

"But that means we're already ahead of the rear flank! If the supply wagons are going through the center of the woods, then we've missed them already! We're going the wrong way!"

"Don't be stupid," said Jean. "Commander Erwin wouldn't bring the wagons through the forest. They've got to be off to the east, where the rest of the formation is. Only the rear flank was going through the woods, remember? To increase our chances of escape if the Shifters showed up?"

Astrid pointed down. "Well, if the supply wagons aren't going through the woods," she yelled, "then how come there are so many Titans heading that way?"

Jean felt his blood freeze as he looked below himself, midflight. Pink bodies were ponderously stomping underneath them, like a herd of giant grinning sheep. How did they mass so quickly? They were like dumb animals, so how did they so often end up in seemingly organized groups? Was it true that Erwin had changed his tactics, and the Titans were just being drawn towards the larger, slower squad as usual, or did they somehow know where Eren was supposed to be?

"An Aberrant!" screamed Astrid. "Look out!"

Jean changed direction so fast he felt the whiplash in his bones. A giant hand was swinging out of the trees, aiming directly for the two soldiers. Jean felt its skin ruffle by his hair as he dodged around it, his heart pounding like it was about to burst with terror. And then the full Titan came into view. It was an especially ugly one, even more malformed than usual, with a mop of dingy brown hair and a head seemingly on a permanent tilt backwards, perpetually gazing at the sky and blindly stumbling forward in this bent-back position, its arms outstretched. Which was frustrating, because it meant that its weak spot was folded away in the fat flesh. There was no way that Jean could have taken down this one.

He felt a wrenching jolt around his waist and his body seized up as it swung out of control. The Titan had caught one of his cables. Jean heard a shriek and the pressure on his back lifted as he was yanked upwards. He twisted his head, flinging out an arm to try and catch Astrid, but he was too slow. As the injured blonde fell, a stream of sparkling tears traced her wake, shaken loose from her cheeks by her terrified writhing.

"Astrid!" Jean screamed, but there was no hope for her. He turned away, his features contorted with misery, praying that Astrid would break her neck when she hit the forest floor. A clean, sudden death was better than being in agony as the Titans maimed you and tore you apart.

Every time Jean saw another soldier cut down, he was reminded of Marco. He hoped in every irrational way that his friend had died quickly, without much pain or fear.

But he couldn't spend too long grieving right now, because the Titan still had a hold on his left cable, and Jean was swinging around in a wide arc, thinking to himself that if he didn't get free of this grip somehow, he was going to be eaten alive. He would be dangled over the hideous, up-turned face like a candy apple and dropped into its maw… Would it be better or worse to be chewed before being swallowed? Eren had mentioned – and he would know, wouldn't he? – that being swallowed whole meant you boiled alive inside its belly, but Jean didn't want the crunching of his splintered bones to be the last thing he heard.

And then, as the Titan's face drew nearer, Jean had a frightening idea. It would cripple him if he did break free, but it would mean he _would_ break free, wouldn't it?

He raised his right hand, the razor-sharp steel sword glinting in the light, and then slashed down at the cable with a yell. The first strike drew sparks, but the line did not break. The second strike left a dent in the braiding, and with the third and fourth slash, the line snapped, and Jean was hurtling away from the Titan, flung by centripetal force.

Now with only one cable functional, Jean struggled to cast it out as he flew backwards. The first few time he shot it out, it grabbed at empty air, and when it finally hooked itself on a branch, it yanked Jean upside-down, sending him tumbling at an odd angle towards the ground. He crashed through the canopy and landed on a patch of moss with a pained grunt, rolling out his momentum as the cable retracted itself.

There was the taste of blood on his lips; he thought he might have bitten his tongue as he fell. His legs ached, his lower pelvic region hurt like crazy, and all the breath had been knocked out of his lungs. Wheezing on his back, Jean tried to lever his upper body off the ground. One of those damn branches had cracked him on the head, too, and the ringing in his ears was making him nauseously dizzy when he tried to move.

But he had to move, he thought in a panic. Otherwise he'd be an easy target for…

The ground was shaking.

A slow, heavy tread was approaching, rumbling the earth, and Jean couldn't even sit up, let alone run. Dammit! He didn't want to die like this! Inside, he was sobbing with fear, but still he struggled backwards towards the tree line, one pained inch at a time.

_Marco…_ he thought helplessly. _I hope to God there's room in Heaven for a beastly coward like me, because… I need to get the chance to see you again._

A shadow fell over the clearing. Jean could barely see through the haze of red mist in his vision, but he discerned a figure, tall as the trees around them, and there was a crunch as it knelt on the leaves.

Jean kept staring at it, frozen, expecting any moment to die. It was massive, at least the size of the largest Titans that he'd seen on this mission. And it wasn't one of the awful, deformed, bulging ones, with their wide grins and huge blank eyes, but it was perhaps worse to see something looking so human devouring its smaller kin.

This Titan had dark hair and its skin was oddly missing in places, in large patches over its shoulders and legs, and in tiny rows over its soulful flesh-rimmed eyes and along its cheeks.

Its behavior, too, was astonishing. It didn't seem to have noticed Jean yet, and instead of lumbering about as the normal Titans usually did, it lay down on the mossy ground with a colossal thump and then, soaking in the sunshine like a happy cat, it stretched and yawned. Its massive limbs crunched against the trees around the edges of the clearing.

Was this freak Aberrant Titan going to take a nap in the middle of the forest? Jean didn't dare sit up, for fear of his clanking gear alerting the Titan to his presence. He lay as still as possible, trying to keep his breathing in check. There was still a mad chance that he could pull through this. Keep it together, Kirschtein. You're too cool to die today.

He shut his eyes, trying to envision his deliverance from this nightmare. Perhaps Eren and Levi would realize that he was in trouble? Yeah, like he wanted that death-seeking creep to be the one to rescue him. Eren might have been humanity's greatest asset at the moment, but he was still a total prick who didn't deserve half the attention he got. At least Levi had earned his respect by actually being good at what he did.

Either way, someone was bound to come here, right? The road was just nearby, and so a couple of scouts with the gear would be flying along and they'd swoop down and rescue Jean before that Aberrant got up from its snooze…

Yeah, who was he kidding? There was no way anyone was going to find him. His only hope would be to shed his gear and sneak away from the Aberrant before it noticed it wasn't alone, and that there was a tasty snack lying on the ground next to it.

Jean reached down to unclip his harness and opened his eyes. And then he had to bite his tongue again to keep from screaming.

The Aberrant Titan was kneeling next to him, looming over him, its face shrouded in shadow. It had moved with incredible stealth; there had been no indication that it was getting up, no hints that it was moving. Jean dug his fingers into the moss, petrified, as the face leaned closer towards him.

Blood was trickling out of the corners of Jean's mouth. _Why do Titans show such fascination with their prey?_ he thought. _Why do they linger before devouring us? It's like they enjoy our pain!_ For the first time, he thought he could understand why Eren hated Titans so zealously. If Jean was the type to harbor mad, suicidal rage, he'd be right on board with the idea.

The Titan reached a massive hand down, pinched the front of Jean's shirt between its thumb and forefinger, and then slowly lifted the frozen soldier up, inspecting him curiously. As the Titan tipped its head up and the ground rushed away from Jean's dangling feet, a huge face came into view, illuminated by the dappled forest light.

Jean stared. And stared. _That's not possible_, he thought. _I'm hallucinating. I'm hallucinating that it looks like him, because I think I'm about to die._

The Aberrant tipped its head to one side, considering the human in its grasp.

"Hey!" Jean yelled, desperate and hoarse. "What the hell are you looking at?"

But the Aberrant Titan showed no sign of understanding. Its eyes were blank and doe-like like that of all the other Titans, and it was faintly grinning the way that so many Titans were, but Jean felt his heart skip a beat as he stared at that goofy smile, those freckled cheeks.

_It can't be…_

The Titan dropped him.

Unable to reorient himself, Jean landed hard on his behind, and spat out blood. He scrambled to his feet, adrenaline spurring him on, unable to process what was happening before his eyes. The Titan was turning away, still dreamily smiling and swaying, and then it trudged off into the forest.

The shocked young soldier was still standing there, mouth open in amazement, when two scouts from the rear right flank swooped down from the trees and rescued him.

* * *

**Design for Titan!Marco inspired by drawings from: scoutology . tumblr . com (Black-Sis on deviantArt)**


	2. Classified Intel

**Author's Note: Please follow, fave, and review if you're enjoying the story! **

* * *

_ I dreamed of a young man. I think I've seen him before. He looks a little scared, and I don't really understand why. I want to say hello to him, but I don't know how to do it. Just looking at him, I can tell that he's a good person, unless it's because I really do know him, and just can't remember. I can tell he doesn't think of himself as a good person, either, but underneath his crust there's something golden and wonderful. I wonder if we can be friends, but I wish he would stop staring at me like I'm some kind of monster._

The doctors wake me this time around. I see Nurse Karla and her husband, Doctor Jaeger, standing over me with concerned expressions. I'm still under the table of the black light, which has been turned off, and when I twist my head to the right (because that's where my blind spot is) I can see raw, exposed muscle. Why haven't I been bandaged up yet?

"Is something wrong?" I whisper. I can't get my voice to go much louder than that. My face is scrunched up with apprehension. Doctor Jaeger is in the process of tossing a syringe away; I assume it's what he used to wake me up.

"You'll be perfectly all right, Marco," Nurse Karla says soothingly, but there's worry in her eyes. "We just had to cut your regenerative session a little short because of a few minor complications. All this means is that you'll have to be in the hospital a bit longer, all right?"

I wonder if they were the same kinds of complications that happened to Franz.

"I understand," I tell Karla, if only because I don't want her to think I'm worrying too much over this. "Really, I don't mind being here. I'm just glad to be alive, you know?"

"Of course," says the nurse, and her husband stands over my bed with an opaque white bottle in his hands. He motions me to roll onto my good side so he can treat my bare flesh with what they use in conjunction with the initial injections, a powder which contains extracellular matrix and some added-in growth hormones. This apparently controls and mediates the growth, so it takes the right shape.

"Doctor Jaeger?" I ask, with the left side of my face smooshed against the gurney.

"Hm?" he says. "What is it, Marco?"

"What happened to Franz? Why didn't his treatment work?"

After a pause, Doctor Jaeger tells me, "Well, let me explain this way. You do realize that this kind of rapid cell growth is highly unnatural, don't you, Marco?"

I nod. I've heard this bit before. "Our bodies have all sorts of ways of stopping cells from dividing too fast and too often, right?"

"Yes, and not without good reason." He sprays an anesthetic onto the flesh, then comments, "Your arm is coming in quite nicely."

"But still no fingers on my hand," I grouse, mostly in jest. "It looks so weird."

"At least your internal organs seemed to have regrown correctly. I believe you'll be able to start eating solid food within a few days."

Having powder sprinkled on me makes me feel like a baby. It's kind of funny, and even with the anesthetic, it tickles. "So did Franz get some kind of cancer from his Titan treatments?" I ask, rubbing the tip of my nose idly with my pinned, but undamaged hand. I think I might sneeze if he doesn't stop shaking magic powder onto my face. They call it PIXI Dust, which is short for something, but I can't remember what. No one really minds not knowing as long as they can keep the cute acronym.

"A cancer, yes," says Doctor Jaeger eventually. "One with a very fast metastasis rate. That is to say, it spread to other parts of the body very quickly. It got to his brain before we could do anything about it."

"But that won't happen to you, dear," Karla assures me nervously. "He was in the preliminary stages of the treatment, and that's where we get the most difficulty. You've already gotten past the most risky parts with little trouble."

Oh. Well, that's good, then. I wouldn't want to have that to worry about on top of everything else.

"I see there's a bit of scarring on your shoulder," says Jaeger, and he rubs his short beard. "That's no good; we need the tissue stimulated to grow, not scar over. Karla, could you hand me the scalpel?"

Are they going to cut bits off me while I'm still awake?

"And get the bandages and the powder ready, too. We'll treat the spot and wrap it up right after I finish the incision."

Huh. I guess they are. Well, at least the area's anesthetized.

The scalpel touches my shoulder. I can actually feel it, but it doesn't hurt, not even when it begins to cut down into the flesh. It just feels peculiar. Karla is fumbling around with the bandages, almost like she's nervous about something, and I hope that everything's all right.

"I've got it right here, Grisha—" she starts to say, as she's unscrewing the cap from the PIXI bottle, but her hands are shaking, and the open bottle slips through her fingers.

I don't know what exactly I was thinking. I'm kind of a dunce sometimes when it comes to helping people, and I guess I figured that since the powder is so powerful, it must be really expensive, so if it spilled out all over the floor it would make Karla feel very guilty. She's just so nice to me, and the Jaegers have two kids to take care of and everything, and God knows I wouldn't want the cost of replacing the magic dust to come out of their pocket.

I yell, "I got it!" and I lean over and reach out with my arm. My _bad_ arm, the one missing a hand and all. I _did_ mention that I can be a total dunce. Anyway, Doctor Jaeger wasn't expecting this and the scalpel slices through my muscle, and suddenly, there's a spark and a bang and a cloud of steam and both the nurse and the doctor are leaping backwards.

I feel my fingers close around the bottle. I've backhanded it neatly, and it's resting in the palm of my hand, not spilling, everything's good, right? I mean, except the fact that it's now impossible to see anything in the room, with all this steam. The fire alarm goes off, loudly and obnoxiously.

The Jaegers have flattened themselves against the wall. I guess they're startled. It surprised me, too. It would have surprised anyone. And then I realize that I have fingers now. On my bad arm. The one that's holding the bottle upright.

Then I hear a loud slam and a shape bursts through the cloud, brandishing an extinguisher. "Fire! Where is it?" demands the newcomer shrilly. "Where's the fire!?" He sprays a few icy jets of foam around my table, and then at the ceiling, just for good measure. The foam is getting everywhere; he's making liberal use of the fire extinguisher like he's always wanted to have a go with one. I feel sorry for scaring this excitable young man.

He nearly sprays me too, which I expect would be not so good for my recovery, but he realizes pretty fast that there isn't any fire. Just me, holding onto a bottle of powder with a skinless hand, on my side on the gurney with a very guilty expression.

"_What_," says the young man, pointing at me. "What the _hell's_ going on?"

His squinting expression is a lovely cocktail of fear and irritation and disbelief. He's got a tall face, with wheat-blonde hair that comes over his forehead in a short, poky sort of fringe. He clutches the extinguisher to his chest like it's his lifeline.

"Nice to meet you too," I say. It's always good to start on amicable terms with someone new. And he's just about my age, too. Perhaps we can be friends.

"You told me," the young man says (I assume to Doctor Jaeger, even though his eyes are fixed on me, or, specifically, my arm), "You _told_ me that his hand hadn't grown in yet. I was going to have to be spoon-feeding this guy to make sure he didn't spill his mush everywhere." He gives a bark of astonished laughter. "Not that I'm complaining or anything… Hey, I'm glad he can pick stuff up on his own because I sure as hell am not doing it for him."

I give him a smile anyway. I'm sure he's a nice person, underneath it all. "Nurse Karla still has the cap for this bottle," I tell him. "I just don't want to drop it. It's really valuable."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it." The young man plucks the bottle out of my fingers, staring at them in their red fleshy glory with disturbed fascination, and reaches a hand out to Karla, who hands him the cap. As he's putting the bottle back on the shelf, he glances at the Jaegers, who are still against the wall and frozen. "Hey, you okay? You guys look scared shitless—uh, I mean… what made that explosion I heard, anyway? Sounded like a cube of pure rubidium being dropped into a glass of water."

I look at him questioningly, and he eventually notices this and rolls his eyes.

"You know, because rubidium's an alkali metal? A super-reactive group on the periodic table? Turns into an alkali hydroxide in an explosive reaction with water? Your _basic_ _high_-_school_ chemistry?"

"I was never very good at chemistry," I say sheepishly. "I was more interested in social studies, anthropology things. So I could tell you all about super-reactive groups but… not the kind you're thinking of." I think this is one of my better quips, and I'm glad to see the young man smirk in response. That seems to be his default expression, though.

Doctor Jaeger is finally getting to his feet, helping his wife to stand. He's staring at my arm like it's a sign from the heavens emblazoned in a cornfield, and he's the only one in the air to see it. "Hyper-rapid generation of tissue…" he says slowly, "… controlled by subconscious impulses. It's just what we were seeing with the other subjects who…"

"But Marco's a _good_ boy!" Karla bursts out, in pleading tones. "Look at him, Grisha! He's in complete control of it! This is nothing like those other cases!"

"What's the big fuss about?" the young man says to the ceiling as the Jaegers continue their argument in hushed tones. My new acquaintance props himself up on my table, next to my head. "I thought this stuff was supposed to promote rapid growth. So it did better than expected, right?" Turning to me, he adds, offhand, "And all that steam would be from rapid dehydration synthesis using moisture in the air to build the scaffold of the new body parts, and subsequent hydrolysis of the unneeded bits." He pulls a face. "It kinda smells."

"So I guess you're the new intern?" I say weakly.

"Yeah, that's me." The young man proudly points a thumb at his chest. "Got picked out from a lineup of _thousands_. You'll be lucky to have me around."

"That's good to hear," I tell him with a smile. "I'd shake your hand but… mine's kind of skinless at the moment. I'm Marco Bodt."

"Jean Kirschtein," the young man says idly. "But just so you don't get any wrong ideas, I'm not here to be your personal slave, okay? I want to study how this Titan procedure works for my research paper, and maybe in ten, fifteen years' time end up with a cushy exec job in the industry." He pats my good hand. "So we can help each other out. Sound good?"

That's not quite the right sort of enthusiasm I'd be looking for, but hey, any enthusiasm is nice to have. "Wouldn't you want to become a top scientist so you can give your cure to the public for the common good of humanity?" I ask him.

He laughs. "Pshhh… I don't worry about that kind of stuff, me. Trust me, it's better to just look out for yourself. And your close friends, of course."

Eventually Doctor Jaeger and Karla come to an agreement of sorts, and Jaeger instructs Jean Kirschtein to wrap me up with bandages while he files his report with the Principal Investigator, Doctor Hanji Zoe. I'm sure she'll be very pleased to hear about my abnormalities. She takes science from the more pure approach, concerning herself mostly with the theory and the new information than how to apply it, which I think is admirable. Knowledge for knowledge's sake and all.

Jean snaps on a pair of latex gloves and carefully wraps my arm with gauze – so carefully, in fact, that each and every finger can still bend without much difficulty. It's like he read my mind. I'm so pleased to have my right hand back; I've really missed it, and it would be a shame for it to be bound up and immovable again. It's then that I make my first official mental observation about Jean. He might be brusque and arrogant, but he's good at what he does, and he takes honest pride in that.

As he's putting the finishing touches on the patch over my eye, I tell him, a little sleepily, "You know, it's funny, but I feel like I've seen you before. In a dream, maybe. We were flying."

"You sure are an oddball, Marco Bodt," he tells me, and I think he might be just the tiniest bit flattered. "Flying, huh?"

"Well, not really," I add. "There was this sort of maneuver gear, two thick boxes you strapped to your hips that could shoot out cables…"

"Sounds awesome," admits Jean, "but how do you know it was me?"

"Oh," I say. "Your expression, I think."

* * *

Somewhere along the line, Jean woke up on a rattling wagon. It was going slowly, so he guessed they were back within the relative safety of the camp within Wall Rose. And that meant, of course, that the mission had failed.

Someone was poking his shoulder. He creaked his eyelids open. "Ugh…" grunted Jean. "What happened to me?"

"You fainted, man," said Connie's worried voice, and Jean saw the boy's shaved head leaning over him. "You came back from the forest babbling about Titans with freckles and all sorts of crazy junk like that. What happened to you in there?"

Jean sat up, scowling. "Shit, I don't know," he muttered. "I can barely remember." He thought about passing it off as just a minor freak-out, but then he realized that he was sitting in a circle of people with identical worried expressions. Connie, Sasha, Armin, Mikasa, even Eren; all of their faces mirrored one another. "What went wrong with the mission, anyway?"

Armin fidgeted. "Somehow, a whole horde of Titans ended up intercepting us in the forest path," he admitted. "It was almost like they knew where we were! We had to pull back to cut our losses."

"And… just how many losses… were there?" Jean asked weakly.

"Too many," Eren muttered, turning away and folding his arms over his chest.

The kid looked pale as a sheet, and he had bandages all over his hands and arms. "What's his deal?" hissed Jean. "What happened?"

"Eren couldn't transform," said Armin quietly. "He tried and tried, but… I thought he was going to bite one of his fingers clean off in the end."

Eren's face twisted. He clenched his fists and punched the side of the wagon. "It didn't matter how many people died around me!" he choked out. "No matter how angry I got, it still wouldn't come! Why can I never do anything right?"

Mikasa laid a hand on her adoptive brother's shoulder. "Eren," she said firmly. "This isn't the time to be regretting the past—"

"I'm pathetic!" Eren sobbed. "Was it just that I don't have enough resolve? Is that it? Was I just too scared to face that many Titans?"

"Eren, listen to me, you little dick." It was Jean. He glared at Eren, who jerked his head up and stared, with wide green eyes. "So you couldn't turn. Like that's never happened before! We weren't going into this mission expecting that it would work perfectly, because you know what?" Jean grabbed the front of Eren's shirt. "It never freaking does!"

"I-Is that supposed to be comforting?" Eren gulped.

"Yeah, it is!" snapped Jean, shaking Eren by his collar. "The whole point of this mission was to get to your basement so that we could find out more about how your weird-ass superpower actually works! Because until we do, we don't even _know_ exactly how you trigger the transformation. We're just working on guesses! And none of _us_ can do what you can do, but we get by anyway, so stop whining! Just… just deal with being a normal human for once!"

Disgusted, Jean let go of Eren and sat back in the wagon, letting his words sink in. Eren looked stunned, unable to find speech, and he cast his wide eyes out to the scenery as it rolled by. The other young soldiers shuffled their feet and tried to look occupied, except for Connie, who was a little slow on the uptake, as usual.

"What did happen to you in the forest, Jean?" he asked. "The scouts said they found you frozen on the ground, with one of your cables broken. Did a Titan attack you?"

"I told you, I don't remember!" Jean insisted. "And I'm not sure how much of it was real and how much was my crazy delusions." He sighed, and frowned at the floor. "I know that I lost Astrid while I was trying to get her back to the supply wagons. She'd been injured before and… she fell off my back after a Titan grabbed my line."

"A-Astrid is dead?" Eren said, horrified.

"It wasn't your fault," Armin said automatically. This was a common phrase that the Recon Corps learned to use at the drop of a hat. It barely carried any meaning anymore, since everyone knew it was always their fault.

"She fell right into the horde of Titans," Jean went on, his eyes glazed over with visions of the recent past. "I remember she was crying as she fell. She knew she was going to die. And I thought… I thought, 'God, I hope she breaks her neck when she hits the ground.' That's what I thought. I didn't even bother hoping that she'd live, somehow."

Sasha grabbed her throat and leaned over the side in a dry heave.

"And what happened after that?" asked Connie, rapt with fear. "How did you get away from the Titan?"

"He cut the line," said Armin instantly. "They said one of his cables was broken."

Jean nodded, fiddled with his 3DMG and then showed them all a frayed, severed cable. "And yeah, that's how I ended up on the ground. I bet none of _you_ could fly around much with only one line."

"But what happened _then?_" Connie demanded, not willing to let this go. "Something spooked you, didn't it?"

Jean took his time formulating a response. He wasn't sure how to sort out what was real and what wasn't, because he was pretty sure that some of the things his mind conjured up while he was standing there until the scouts found him were fake as shit, but he was sure of one thing.

"I saw a Titan," he said. "An Aberrant. And it was really… _really_ aberrant."

He now had their full, undivided attention now. This was the sort of intel that they were always looking for on the scouting missions. Enjoying being the focus for once, Jean let the others conjure up possibilities in their mind.

"What do you mean, it was especially aberrant?" Eren finally asked. "Was it intelligent? Do you think it was a Shifter?"

"Well, I'm not sure, but this information could be classified," Jean told them all, smirking a little. "I could get in trouble telling you all."

"Just do it!" Sasha burst out. "Come on, we've all heard secrets before!"

"Please, tell us!" urged Armin.

"Yes, please do," said Levi. "What's classified?"

They all stopped short. Jean felt a bead of sweat drip down his face. Somehow, the captain had landed on the lip of the wagon right behind Jean's head without anyone noticing him. He was looming above them now, for once higher than everyone else, with the wind playing patterns with his hair.

Connie hastily saluted. "Sir! Jean was just going to tell us about a strange encounter with a Titan he had, sir!"

Captain Levi stepped down with ease and pulled up a hay bale. "Please, continue," he said, his eyes fixed on Jean.

"I… ah…" Suddenly the spotlight didn't seem like the best place to be. "I met a Titan who didn't attack humans," Jean reported, swallowing. "At least, it didn't seem to be going with the other Titans, sir, and it left me alone, too."

"We've seen Aberrants that didn't seem to notice humans before," said Mikasa slowly. "What made this one any different?"

"Well, it _did_ notice," said Jean, with noticeable discomfort. "It noticed me. It knelt down and stared at me and then it picked me up by my shirt and…"

* * *

"… and looked at me in that creepy way Titans do, but it didn't eat me," Jean said, for what felt like the thousandth time. He was leaning his cheek on his palm, one elbow on the wooden table at the conference room in base camp, wearily trying to recount his story without leaving any important bits out. Twilight had already fallen, and rumors of Jean's odd encounter were buzzing around camp like horseflies. "It just dropped me once it was through staring, and then it went back into the forest. That's all."

Commander Erwin laced his fingers together and touched them to his chin in thought. "What do you think about it, Eren?" he finally said.

"M-me?" asked the boy, surprised to be in focus here. "Well, I'd have to say it sounds like a Shifter."

"Well, it wasn't," snapped Jean, tired of having to repeat this. "I tried to talk to it and it just gave me this dumb look. Besides, wouldn't a Titan Shifter be a little more careful about revealing itself to someone? This guy literally just walked into the clearing and lay down on the moss like a sleepy puppy."

"Do I detect a certain fondness in your tone and word choice?" asked Squad Leader Hanji Zoe, who never seemed to miss anything. She was almost as annoyingly perceptive as Armin, but at least Hanji was higher-ranked than Jean, so it felt appropriate. "Not everyone would use the words 'sleepy puppy' to describe a Titan of any sort."

Except you, Jean thought sourly. And, apparently, me. "Well, that's what it reminded me of. It looked… gentle. Like it would take care not to step on a baby bird's nest if it saw one on the ground."

Hanji's eyes glittered. "That will have to be the first experiment we do!" she declared. "I'm sure there's a nest we can dig up somewhere in these woods. And then, perhaps, we'll try to make contact with it again."

"Hold up," said Captain Levi, sounding bored, as usual. "So, what you're saying is we should go back into the man-eating-Titan-infested woods just to look for one harmless, gentle Titan? Are we just going to pat its head and tell it, good job, thank you for not eating Jean, or will we try to bring it back with us as a pet?" He leaned over and gave Hanji his most withering stare. "I'll remind you that the Titans we're concerned with aren't the nice, fluffy sort."

Hanji looked mere thoughts away from sticking out her tongue at Levi. "Nice speech, Mister Chatty," she said, unruffled. "But just think of the possibilities! If we could find out what makes this one Titan so docile, we could use it against other Titans! It would be one of the greatest advances humanity's made so far!" She clasped her hands together, her eyes seemingly gazing past the ceiling and into the stars with utter rapture. "Just envision it! A legion of soldiers, flying by Titans and spraying them with Gentle Juice. Not one of the monsters even lifts a finger against the civilians who begin traveling under their legs! Or, better yet, instilling some kind of rudimentary intelligence in the Titans, making them perfectly obedient foot soldiers, loyal as bloodhounds!" She shuddered with joy. "What an amazing opportunity!"

"You can't be serious," said Levi, who knew Hanji always was. "Why should we risk so many lives just for some Gentle Titan that might not even be what we think it is?"

"Not unless we only take a tiny force," Jean's mouth said.

_ What are you doing, you gratuitously flapping moron?_ Jean's mind asked his mouth, with frantic fury. _Are you clinically insane?_

"And if we travel at night, we'll be able to avoid most of the Titans, since they've been shown to have lower activity then," Jean's mouth added, ignoring his mind.

_You just want to see that Titan again because you want to be sure you weren't imagining that it looked like Marco!_ yelled Jean's mind. _Which makes you as suicidally stupid as Eren!_

"A tiny force, traveling close together at night…" said Erwin slowly. "We've scouted the route to the forest enough times that it wouldn't be much trouble finding our way there, with the stars to guide us…"

Levi's left eye twitched, but he said nothing.

"If anything happens to the group, I'll just turn into a Titan and carry everyone back," added Eren. He stared down at his bandaged hands with brewing anger in his eyes. "I _know_ I'll be able to do it this time. I wouldn't let my friends die. Or you, Jean." Eren looked up. "I didn't think you'd be the one to suggest this sort of thing."

"Thanks," Jean muttered, oozing sarcasm. "That really warms my heart."

"Then I'm coming along too," said Levi. As he found everyone's eyes on him, he shrugged. "I'm supposed to be looking after Eren, isn't that right? To make sure he keeps his inner monster in check."

"It's settled, then," said Commander Erwin, standing sharply. "We'll take a few days to prepare for this mission. I trust that you will all come back alive," he added.

"Oh, don't worry about me, sir," said Jean. "I'm a natural born survivor."

* * *

**End Note: If any of you are curious about where this RHIM procedure came from, it's actually a kind of funny thing, but it started out as something separate from Shingeki no Kyojin fan theories. I did a project for a contest a little while back (before I knew about SnK, too!) where I had to propose a new technology that could be possible in the near future. I had been doing a lot of research into regenerative medicine and found all this stuff about the extracellular matrix and how it has been used to regrow a whole chunk of someone's leg and so on, so my "invention" ended up being the RHIM procedure, and the PIXI dust I mention in the story was also part of the proposal. I plan on talking more about the basic idea in later chapters, so if you like science, stay tuned!**


	3. The Night Mission

For the next few days, the camp was full of apprehension. Many of the members of the Recon Corps had heard about the undercover night mission that Erwin had planned, mostly due to idle gossip and a few slip-ups on Jean's part. He was quite surprised, however, to find a good number of soldiers who were eager to come along.

"The squad isn't full yet, is it?" asked a tiny girl who must have just come out of training that month, wavering slightly on the balls of her feet. "I'm very good at being stealthy, that's what they always say."

"Er…" said Jean.

"Me as well," piped up a young man who had to be at least two meters tall with shoulders almost as wide. "I'm the king of stealth, me."

"Listen," said Jean, rubbing his eyes. "Did it ever occur to either of you that this mission is practically suicide? Or are you just new here?"

It did take a certain kind of insanity to join the Recon Corps, Jean had to admit to himself. And to each of them there was a distinct reason for having that insanity. A person could be otherwise completely well balanced, but when it came to that one thing, that one reason, they were as mad as hatters. Which was why Jean was volunteering for this insane suicide mission anyway. His reason was, and had always been, Marco.

He still hadn't told anyone about what he'd seen. But then, if all went well, they'd see it for themselves.

Preparations were mostly done to ensure the maximum amount of fail-safes for the expedition. A formation was designed for speed and for stealth, with Eren at the center, ready to form a rib cage around them at any moment. Jean had been woken up several mornings to the sharp crack of a Titan transformation. It was getting annoying to hear all the time, making him drop his lunch and fumble things because it damn well never stopped being startling, but at least it was a sign of good progress. They'd been practicing the maneuver over and over, trying to get Eren to be able to make the same sort of protection as he'd allegedly constructed when he and his friends had nearly been blown to pieces by a trigger-happy Garrison officer.

"It's all under control," Eren kept saying, and every day his tone grew more and more optimistic. "I don't know what was keeping me from transforming before, but it's gone now!"

Lucky for him, Jean thought bitterly. As usual, Eren was the key piece of the plan. It always had to be about Eren.

In the end, the group decided on had been tiny – Levi, Hanji, Eren, Mikasa, and Jean. Two experienced soldiers, one Titan Shifter, one all-around prodigy… and Jean. Useless, he thought, except for the fact that he'd seen the Gentle Titan himself.

He'd explained to them thoroughly as to why he thought the clearing would be their best shot at finding the Titan again. For one thing, it had seemed remarkably comfortable there, like it knew the spot well. When it stretched while lying down, too, its hands and feet scraped against the trees. Jean recalled there being distinctive scoring and missing bark, indicating that the Titan's presence was a habit. On top of that, the forest floor in the clearing itself was devoid of new-growth saplings, which normally would be taking advantage of the opening in the canopy, lending more weight (quite literally!) to the image of a Titan laying out to rest there.

Jean had struggled through all these conclusions with Armin's help, of course, because without it he knew he would never have been able to piece this all together. The tactician would sit across from Jean on a tree stump in the afternoons, his child-like features scrunched with concentration and cunning beyond his years, asking Jean a series of careful questions about his encounter, and forming theories from the answers.

One time, Armin asked, quite simply, "What did the Titan look like?"

Jean's throat clenched up. He tried to compose himself, and focus on the facts. "Big," he said firmly. "Big as a building. About as tall as Eren gets."

"Any distinguishing features?" persisted Armin. "Facial structure, a resemblance to—"

"Yeah, it was missing skin in places," Jean told him. "On the insides of its legs, on its shoulders, in little freckles all over its face…" He pointed to his own skin to demonstrate.

Armin's eyes narrowed and then widened again. He shifted on his stump. "That sounds good enough to identify by," he agreed hastily. "And what color hair did you say it had again? Dark brown, was it?"

"Y-yeah," Jean agreed. "Yeah, that's what I said. Dark hair. Almost black." He wondered when he'd told Armin this. Maybe in an earlier session?

And then, it was the afternoon of the expedition, and Jean was waiting restlessly on horseback, trying to iron out the butterflies in his stomach. He wasn't sure if he was more nervous about going out into Titan territory at night, or about seeing the Gentle Titan again.

He'd checked his gear to see if the replacement cable worked. Twice. It did. He'd fiddled with his blades, making sure none of them had gone sticky. None had. He'd confirmed that the rolled-up section of net was easily accessible on his back, along with the cable gun that would be used to pin the net down if, by some luck, the mission turned out well and they got close enough to capture the Titan.

"You're ready then?" came a voice from behind him. It was Eren, riding up with Mikasa at his left. Jean avoided eye contact with the both of them, for radically different reasons.

"Ready as I'll ever be," Jean admitted, checking his swords again. "The others here to wish us luck? Come to see us one last time before we end up in a Titan's belly?"

He was referring to the group that was trailing behind Eren and Mikasa, each leading a scouting horse. Armin, Sasha, and Connie. Those were the only ones left, Jean thought grimly, that they could really trust, if it was even possible to trust anyone in this crazy world.

"We've volunteered to join you!" called Sasha, through mouthfuls of bread. She always worked out her nerves by eating.

"Right," said Connie, as he drew alongside the shocked Jean. "So suck it up."

"You _volunteered?_" Jean exclaimed. "And the commander _agreed_ to this? What, did you guys get tired of living all of a sudden?"

"No way!" Connie shook his head vehemently, although his eyes were deeply shadowed with worry. "We've got our own reasons for being here, got that?"

Sasha swallowed down the last gulp of bread and wiped sweat from her forehead. Her knees were knocking, but she looked grimly determined. "R-right!" she said. "Anyway, Eren's on the top of his game! I saw him transform a zillion times!"

"It's true," Armin told Jean, exchanging swift glances with the others, who all returned this with slight nods. "If he stays focused, he can control what kind of shape he takes. He's come a long way since when he first started transforming… in fact, he's come a long way since our last mission."

Levi and Hanji were also walking their horses up to the group. "More brats to look after," muttered the captain, mounting his steed.

"More net to hold down the Titan, you mean!" exclaimed Hanji, who looked on the bright side of things, clasping her hands together. "And if I had to handpick three more members, I don't think I would have chosen any others!"

Levi rode to the lead, ignoring her. "Lanterns out," he told them, and they all dutifully took out their oil lamps. "But not on. Don't use them unless you have to."

"We're riding as much of the first leg as we can while there's still daylight," Hanji clarified, "and after that we want your eyes to adjust to the darkness. It's a full moon tonight, and it looks clear, so we should be able to see where we're going. Now, is everyone ready?"

Jean stared down at his hands; they were trembling. He clenched them tight. "Let's ride," he said.

* * *

There were bound to be questions after my hand grew back so fast. Masked doctors surround me for the next few days, taking careful measurements on everything. And yet they keep their distance. Are they frightened of me? If so, why? I cough, and they scuttle from the room. I sneeze, and they reach for the hypodermic needles to sedate me. They confiscate sharp objects in my room. Worst of all, they keep me away from everyone else. The isolation is unbearable, even though I'd grown used to it in the past. I thought… I don't know what I thought, but I suppose I'd hoped, after meeting Jean Kirschtein, that I'd finally have a friend.

I never really did have much company here. Hannah was a lovely person but she spent her free time at Franz's bedside instead of mine. I'm not resentful, of course, given how it turned out for him. And I'd had an intern taking care of me before then as well, Thomas, but then he had his accident… I heard it was a bear, or a tiger, or some other escaped zoo animal, but I never got told the details. It was weird timing for an escapee animal attack, because the last I saw of him, he was just closing up at the hospital for the night, and then the next morning, he was in the room next to me, one giant mess of bloody bandages. But he was only there for a few days. Soon after, he was cremated in the furnaces down below, supposedly out of the fear of what they called "turning". I suppose that means turning into a biohazard; it's one of those words that is only said at a whisper. "Too much damage," the doctors whispered to each other. "He's unsalvageable."

It sounds a little callous, doesn't it? I suppose most of the people here are more focused on progress than anything else. There's big money in this research, but big risks too. But you have to look at the big picture, right? When Experiment TW – Thomas Wagner – failed, that meant the research project would be set back for months. It meant that whatever they had done to me didn't work on everyone. I was an outlier, a peculiarity. And all that meant, then, that it would be that many more months, months full of factory accidents and hit-and-runs and IUDs blowing up tanks of UN soldiers off in the Zones, before people could start being cured.

So, I got lonely. That's pretty much why I was so happy to meet Jean. I know he could have been nicer, but a lot of people around here talk like him. It's hard times for all of us. So I'm sad that I couldn't see him for so long after our first meeting. I wanted to get to know the guy.

I'm sitting up in my bed, but that's not a surprise because I never go anywhere else. Will my new nerve connections _ever_ get the chance to work if I don't get any exercise?

The TV is on, and it's almost twilight. Evening news is always the worst news, I feel, because that's when they broadcast updates on the wars. It makes me sad hearing about all the troubles the world is having.

"_… and in other news, a large group of Wandkult protesters gathered in the capital to read out their demands to the legislature. Police believe that even with their leader, the infamous Pastor Nick, apprehended, this 'Wall Cult' will continue to grow in popularity. Say, Marlo… can I call you Marlo? What do you think about their stance on the recent scientific advances made right here in New Heidelberg?_"

They're talking about me, then. I lean forward. The blonde anchorwoman beams bright and brittle at her young guest, who clears his throat. "_Well, Brigitte, aren't these much the same scum who could be found not thirty years ago, claiming that climate change was a hoax? Their type has been spreading all throughout the world in the last few decades. People who are afraid of science, but for all the wrong reasons._" The man leans in closer; he looks like an academic with his tweedy jacket and bowtie. He's got dark hair in a bowl cut and an intense look in his eyes."_The Wall Cult says that it's too dangerous to tamper with life and death because only God can do that, but they're hypocrites. I have strong evidence to support the claim that their leaders are all in the pocket of Titan Corp!_"

"_Don't you work for Titan Industries, though?_" says Brigitte the interviewer, genteelly shocked. Then she laughs. "_It sounds like between you, Mister Freudenberg, and the Wandkult, Titan Corp is doing a fine job of paying people to stir up resentment against themselves!_"

It's clear she doesn't believe him, but Marlo's expression is tight and fierce. "_Just because the Wall Cult seems to be working against Titan Corp's interests, you think the two couldn't possibly be related? That's lunacy! Everyone knows that if the Wandkulter had their way, Titan Corp's projects would continue, just without any sort of ethical standards or regulation! I'm only working for Titan Corp so I can rise to the top and fix what it's doing,_" he says. "_You can't win against the establishment from the outside. That's what history teaches us._"

I'm not so sure I agree with him, but I can tell he has a good heart. Still, I'm also doubtful that Titan Industries is all that insidious. H.G. Wells once said – and I know this because the German translation is carved on the face of this building – he said, "I want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own." And that's what this research is doing. It erodes away at the definition of what death is. Once, if a person's heart was stopped, that was it. But then, we learned we can restart it with CPR and defibrillators. Yet we still believed that if enough brain damage had occurred, there was no hope for them. Now look at me. I lost half my face, including a large chunk of my brain, and I was clinically dead for over a day. But as long as there were living cells in my body and in my brain, I was still 'salvageable'.

I shut off the TV. My throat is dry, but there's no water around. Wait… There is some in the hall, one of those machines that can give you cold, or hot for your tea, or ice, except the ice that comes shooting out always overflows and ends up on the floor. I consider, for a moment, ringing in Jean to do it. I'd get to see him again, at least. My finger is actually a mere centimeter away from the pager button on the side of my bed when I realize how much he would resent being used like a servant. Besides, I didn't really want someone to get my water for me. I wanted to get it myself.

It's like a dream. I shift in my bed, and then my bare feet land on the floor. Feeling that pressure on the arch and sole… it's so alien to me, like I'm a newborn taking my first assisted steps. But I know that my legs can handle it. They weren't injured in the accident; it's just the nerve connections that are a little shaky.

And then, like that, I'm standing.

I'm wavering a little, but I'm upright. Blood is rushing out of my head, but adrenaline is rushing in, so I'm all right. It's a woozy sort of all right, but I can make it. I unclip the IV from my arm and draw out the needle. What am I doing? This is crazy, this is silly, this is… _fun_.

I promise myself that I'll be back in bed before anyone notices. Just one cup of water, that's all. It will be a secret accomplishment.

* * *

They were quiet while passing through Wall Rose as twilight fell, trying to keep as low a profile as possible. The gate guards had all been replaced with Recon Corps members – some of Erwin's back-room dealings, Jean expected. This mission had been planned for nearly a week, and if it was betrayed somehow to a group outside the Recon Corps, then the most powerful soldiers humanity commanded could all be wiped out in one blow. But then, these were times when desperate gambles were all the hope that was left.

If the land within Wall Maria hadn't been infested with monsters, it would have been stunningly gorgeous. Sunset brought blazing hues to the tips of the grass blades, made the ruined homes they passed by look like bonfires. The group stayed close, silent, letting the easy, energy-conserving canter of the horses be the only sound among them. Every so often, Levi would hold up his hand, and bring the company to a halt. Then he would dismount and lean his ear to the ground, searching for vibrations that would hint at a Titan nearby.

The first time that Levi nodded as he came up, indicating that he'd felt something, Jean had a flash of craven fear, an urge to turn right around and quit altogether. But they'd planned for this, he reminded himself, and stilled his heart as the lightweight Connie received instructions from Hanji and scrambled up the closest tree with his gear. At the top, the boy flung himself straight into the air at a slight spin, so he could survey the entire landscape. Then he corkscrewed down, skidded on the dirt, and pointed. "Looked like a fifteen-meter class, off that way," he reported. "Wasn't heading towards us, but we should skirt around it anyway, right, Captain?"

And so they did, and continued like this until the forest came into view; just in time, too, since the light was beginning to grow dim. Jean marveled at how elite the Recon Corps really was. For any ordinary soldiers, a mission like this would have been blatant suicide, but they'd gotten this far already without a hitch. Still, the stretch ahead would be the difficult part. This was the time when the sturdier Titans could still be active, but visibility was low. Hanji turned to the squad and nodded, and they all dismounted and did a quick spot check of their equipment. Jean looked to each of them in turn, as they lifted thumb-up signs to indicate they were all ready, and then copied the gesture.

The plan was not to reach the clearing by horseback, but through the canopy, with their 3D maneuver gear. It had been decided that they would be too vulnerable on the ground, although with spare tanks of gas strapped to their backs along with the rolls of netting they had brought, they were each weighed down by about fifty extra pounds of gear. Because of this, they had all been given permission to drop the heavy nets if circumstances demanded it.

With the horses tied up at the entrance to the forest, Levi raised a finger towards the branches above them. "Go," he told the squad.

As one, they rose.

Once, the lurch and shift of perspective would have been disorienting to all of them, sending jolts of vertigo through the soles of their feet, but they'd all trained together, practiced together, and fought together until the motion was as natural as walking. So Jean didn't have to think about it much as he propelled himself into the forest, which left plenty of room in his mind for worrying about the future, and about seeing the Titan that looked so much like his best—no, his closest, his _dearest_ friend.

Wind whipped through his hair. It was growing colder, now that the sun was down, but adrenaline kept his fingers warm. He heard someone swinging up behind him, and then looked to his side as they passed him. It was Eren. Jean pulled a face; he'd been hoping to talk to someone like, say, Mikasa. Or… well, mainly Mikasa.

"Just how far into the forest is this clearing, anyway?" Eren said, over the hiss of his cables. "Can you remember where it is?"

"Don't be an ass; of course I can remember!" Jean rolled his eyes. "Besides, it's hard to miss, even at night. You'll know you've run out of trees when you fall and land on your butt in the dirt."

"Unless we fall and land on the Titan!" Sasha squeaked. "I don't think that's how we want to get its attention!"

But they'd only progressed a little ways before Armin, who was probably the least combat able of them, nearly flew into a tree. They all heard a squeal of cables being twisted in odd ways and then a crack and rustle of branches. With Titans on their mind, they all wheeled around, but it was only the blond tactician, helplessly dangling upside down from one of his lines. "I'm so sorry!" he whispered, mortified. "I must have shot one of my hooks into a bird's nest! I'm never this clumsy during the… the day… oh my g—"

Jean saw Armin's horrified expression first, before he could get a view on what was going on. With his body inverted, Armin had to crane his neck to see what was on the ground, but whatever he saw there had him transfixed.

"Armin!" hissed Eren urgently. "Wh-why are you just hanging there? Is there a Titan below us?"

"I-I don't think it's…" Armin struggled to reorient himself. "I don't really know!"

Eren swung across and pulled Armin upright, guiding him to the nearest stout branch. Then, the boy tried to squint at the forest floor. He swallowed. "Oh god…"

"What's going on?" said Hanji, sliding to an easy halt on a protruding branch above Armin. She, too, looked down, and her whole being seemed to fluff up with a gasp of elated shock. She opened the shutter of her lantern, sending a beam of light down through the canopy. "What _is_ that?" she exclaimed. "What an… an _enigma!_"

Finally Jean managed to get himself to a place where he could see, and when he did, he wished he hadn't.

The ground was covered with a heaving gelatinous ooze, with steam rising from it in great waves. "It's the contents of a Titan's stomach!" Jean exclaimed, nauseated. He'd seen ones like it firsthand after the Battle of Trost, but none had been _moving _like this. It was like the human remains within were being digested before their eyes.

And then Jean realized just where they were, and he knew whose mangled body had to be in there. "It's Astrid," he muttered, in shock. "Astrid Leeds. This is where she fell."

Eren's eyes bulged. "They ate her…" the boy whispered, his voice cracking, "and then they puked her up…" He clenched at his hair, and his words turned feral with rage. "And now on top of all that her body is being desecrated by some revolting process!?"

"Wh-what's _happening _to it?" moaned Armin, leaning his face into Eren's shoulder.

"I _have_ to get a sample!" Hanji cried. "Just _think_ of what this could tell us about Titans! We could find the answer to why they eat humans! We could—" She shoved her light into Levi's chest. "Hold my lantern," she said briskly, and jumped from the branch.

Jean knew he should try not to be disgusted by Hanji's enthusiasm. She had her reasons; whatever was happening to the stomach contents – to Astrid, his mind cruelly supplied – had never been observed before. All the bodies had been collected and burned after Trost, and survey squads rarely could return to the same spot where a person had been killed within a few days. In other words, it was likely that very few people had seen what took place in this window of time to the victims of Titans.

Which in itself was frightening. "There's so much we don't know about them…" Eren murmured. "If anyone's seen this before, the information can't have gotten out. I've never heard of this happening."

"Levi, move the light a little!" Hanji called. "There's a branch in the way!"

The captain, at first glance, seemed merely irritated with Hanji. A more careful observer might have seen, however, that his movements had become even more precise and focused than the usual. He had pulled himself taut, like a bowstring. Nerves, Jean thought. No. _Nervous._

Oblivious, Hanji crouched down and prodded the churning mass with one blade, trying to determine a good vantage point from which to remove a piece. "What a _specimen!_" she kept on saying. "I've never seen anything like it before!"

"How does she find the _stomach?_" whispered Connie, who was watching through the slits between his fingers. His expression, from what Jean could see of it, mirrored how Jean felt.

"Well, it's pretty big," said Sasha, misunderstanding in her usual way. "And we've all got our lights pointed down. It's not _that_ hard to see where it is."

A tiny slice of the roiling matter was being lifted on the tips of Hanji's blades. "It isn't decaying!" she breathed, going cross-eyed as she tried to look closer at it. "And yet it's still emitting steam…" Wonderingly, she reached out a finger.

"Hanji, don't—!" Captain Levi started to say, and Jean saw a rare flicker of emotion in his eyes.

"Yowch!" yelped Hanji, pulling her hand back and sucking on the pad of her finger. "Incredible! It's giving off so much heat!"

"What did you expect?" Levi told her, relaxing his grip on his swords. He sighed, exasperated. "Stop wasting time on this, Zoe. We have a Titan to catch."

Hanji chuckled and folded the piece of bubbling flesh into a handkerchief, which she placed in her vest. "You can't hurry science," she said, waggling a finger at Levi and reaching for her sword handles to swing herself back to the group. "But what a find! What luck! What—"

The Titan's stomach erupted, and a slick, meaty hand closed around Hanji's throat.

It lifted her up; a shoulder emerged, then a dripping head and its too-wide smile full of teeth. In that same moment, Levi snapped.

The tiny captain came whizzing down with his swords held high, whirling them in a flurry of blows. His first slice severed the hand at the wrist; Hanji fell to the forest floor, uncurling the Titan's fingers, then gagging and clutching her neck. Levi's blades kept going, hacking off bits of the arm, mincing it all the way up to the elbow before it could grow back. It was shockingly brutal and, more uncharacteristically, it was frantic, without any of Levi's usual precision. He just kept slicing in front of him as bits of Titan flesh flew everywhere.

He probably wouldn't have stopped until he chopped right through the emerging Titan's face down to its neck, but Mikasa cut this short. With one clean, graceful swoop, she severed the Titan's weak spot.

The others were already slinging down to help. "N-nice work," stammered Jean, unable to meet Mikasa's eyes. "You've really got the… got the knack…"

"So the Titan… was hiding inside that thing?" Connie exclaimed. "What was it doing there, sleeping? So they eat us, puke us out, and then crawl inside the puke to get cozy?"

Armin was shuddering uncontrollably. "I-it wasn't hiding," he got out. "Look!"

"I don't understand!" Eren exclaimed, unconsciously picking up on the panic that was spreading throughout the group. "What are we supposed to be looking at? Wh-what do you mean, it wasn't hiding?"

Levi had turned away without a word and pulled Hanji up by her collar. "I told you your experiments would end badly one of these times," he muttered, his eyes flashing. "Don't you ever let your guard down like that again. You hear me? Never!" Then his gaze darted out to Hanji's neck, and he dropped the woman. "You're hurt."

Hanji touched a tentative finger to her throat. The skin there was raw and dark pink. "It burned me," she admitted, shakily getting off her knees. "Its hands were like red-hot irons!" The young scientist adjusted her skewed glasses and pulled off her cloak, which was smoldering at the collar. "Levi…"

"Don't thank me," muttered the captain. "I won't always be around to babysit you."

"Sir! Ma'am!" It was Sasha, waving frantically at their two superiors. "Armin just discovered something about this Titan! It's—"

Hanji gave a screech of shock and raced back to the stomach. "Don't tell me! Don't tell me! I need to see it for myself!" She wrapped her ruined cloak around her hands and then plunged them into the mess, dragging out the sizzling Titan by its blonde hair.

The Titan was far smaller than usual, less than twice the size of a tall man and likely half the weight. Its skin was not yet formed in all places, either, something unusual for normal Titans. As Jean watched Hanji tug at the steaming mass, he felt a spark of terrified recognition. "Wait…" he mumbled. "Doesn't that Titan look like…?"

By now the Titan's torso was fully emerged from the stomach, and Hanji kept hauling. "It's stuck! Give me some help!" Her glasses were glinting under the full moon light. "It's going to disintegrate soon! I _need_ to examine it!"

The others were shifting back and forth, eyes darting into the shadows around them. "We don't have time for this," Jean hissed, clenching his swords as sweat beaded on his forehead despite the chilled air. "If we want to find Mar—the Gentle Titan and capture it, we have to make haste!"

"Why… won't it… come out…?" grunted Hanji. She strained backwards, and then fell over as the hunks of hair she'd been using as leverage tore out of the Titan's scalp. "Unf!"

"I don't think there is any more to it," said Armin wonderingly, placing his blade on the Titan's hip, where its skin entered the stomach sludge. "It seems like the flesh ends here, which means…"

Hanji bounded to her feet, almost drooling with anticipation. "So you mean… the rest of it _hasn't been formed yet?_"

Jean fumbled his swords, which fell to the ground ungracefully. He leaped away from the stomach. The weight of the words hit like a sack of bricks. "That's not… that's imposs—"

"It's true!" Hanji exclaimed, falling to her knees once again and clasping her hands together. "But I still can't believe it! We just witnessed a Titan… _being born!_"

* * *

I'm almost there.

Pace by pace, tentative fairy steps, hugging the wall in case I lose my thrilling rush of self-actualizing power and with it, my balance… I see the water cooler up ahead, a beautiful oasis of thirst-quenching dihydrogen monoxide. That means water, by the way. One of the members of the team of doctors was working on me for the past few days, Dr. Bossard, pranked me by saying that there were high levels of dihydrogen monoxide in the steam being emitted by my wounds. He really had me going for a little while until Dr. Ral stepped in and explained why Bossard was laughing so much. "Auruo pulls that one on everyone," she told me. "But you're the first one who's actually fallen for it."

I reach the cooler. I'm so lightheaded that I fumble the cup, and spill half of it on the floor. But the rest goes straight down my throat. I'm beaming now; I feel so alive and unhindered by my injury. I refill and down the second icy gulp as quickly as the first.

There's something peculiar that I don't notice at first. But my feet are bare; they pick up on it eventually. The floor is vibrating, in pulses. It feels like a Tyrannosaurus is stomping down the halls. My feet have a mind of their own, it seems, because I realize that I'm drifting down the corridor. The further I go, the stronger the pulses.

And then I start to hear the screaming. It's muffled, broken up by sobs, and I break into a run. A sharp pain stabs at my right temple, but who cares about that? Someone's seriously hurt!

"_What is this!?_" a shrill voice beseeches. "What did you _do _to me!?" More rumbling, and then a crash.

"Astrid, please…" a voice is begging. "You must calm down! Otherwise it will—"

"Don't be fooled!" yells someone else. "That's not Astrid! Ready the scalpel, and give me a clear shot at its neck! We have to remove the stem tissue!"

The girl's voice is degrading into gargling screams, but I'm still able to make out the words. "It's all dark in here! Oh god! Oh god! I'm claustrophobic, someone please get me out!"

The sharp pain again. This time it brings me to a halt. My ears are buzzing; my head is spinning. Out of nowhere, I'm nauseous, and my skin feels too cold and too hot at once.

A sudden burst of agony wracks my whole body. My nerves are on fire. And then, I fall. I feel my skull crack against the floor, my limbs writhing out of control. I can feel foam in my throat; I'm choking on my own spit. The doctors warned me about this when they told me about the remodeling in my brain tissue. A seizure.

I'm not sure if the ants crawling on my skin are really there, and the jury is still out on the red-hot railroad spike through my head. I'm fairly sure that I imagined the giant hand punching a meter-wide hole through the wall in front of me, though.

* * *

**End Note: Someone on the other site I posted this asked if Astrid would steal the spotlight as an OC. Well... no. She won't. Because she's dead. I do enjoy making OCs for cameos in the story, but this one is focusing on canon characters, and I just need to have people to fill roles such as "sacrificial lamb" or "archetypal representing a particular role or point of view" (such as Brigitte the news lady, standing in for the general public). But (like I did with Marlo Freudenberg) I'll try to give canon characters key cameos as well. Also, not all of the OCs in this story are going to be there just to be Titan food, but... you know... you've got to have someone to get chomped. This IS SnK, after all.**


	4. Freckle-Face

**Author's Note: All my thanks to my first few reviewers, and to my subscribers. You guys are the reason why I write, after all!**

* * *

After their astonishing discovery, the squad took to the trees. Jean was still wringing shock out of his limbs as he surged upwards through the canopy.

The Titans grew out of the remains of their meals. That very revelation made this entire trip worth it. It was a step to explaining what the Titans were, why they ate humans, and how there were so many of them. _So why do I still feel so anxious?_ Jean thought. _For once, we managed to get some vital information without anyone getting killed!_ Perhaps it was because the other recruits had been keeping to themselves the whole time, whispering to one another. He had the sense that they were in some kind of collusion.

"Fan out," called Hanji. "We're getting close to the clearing."

Up ahead, the others were sliding to a halt on a fat branch. Jean dropped down between Connie and Mikasa and fumbled with his lantern. "We there yet?" he asked.

"Shh!" whispered Connie nervously. "We're not supposed to talk. Captain's orders. Oh, and he says not to use your light!"

"Can't see for shit," grumbled Jean, tying the lamp back to his belt. It had been banging onto his hip the whole time, and he was really beginning to resent having to bring it without using it much. "Are we at the clearing?"

"_Shh!_" said Sasha. "Captain's! Orders!"

"But is Mar_—is the Titan there or n_—_?_"

A hand clapped over his mouth. Jean followed it down to its owner, and then turned a delicate shade of pink. "Yes," whispered Mikasa, not even bothering to look over at Jean. "He's there."

It was just barely possible to see by the moonlight, which was scattered by the branches above and below, and by the clouds swirling overhead. Jean waited for his night vision to creep in and focused on the gap in the trees up ahead. The wind blew open the curtains of the sky and let a shaft of bright silver light glow up the ground and highlight the frame of a massive figure kneeling, motionless, in the center of the clearing.

"Ah-hah!" Hanji hissed to the captain, and she adjusted her glasses, to get a clearer look. "It seems to be hibernating! I've seen this before, with my poor Sawney and his friend Bean."

Levi rolled his eyes at the reference to Hanji's old lab rats, the two Titans they had captured after Trost. "And does it take much to wake them up?" he said.

Hanji scratched her chin. "Hm… they sleep a bit deeper than a normal human, and they're sluggish waking up, but none of them even could start moving until they'd had a good soak in the sunshine."

The captain tilted his head towards Jean, who was standing just behind him. "Well?" Levi demanded. "Is this the same Titan you saw?"

Jean looked into the clearing, at the unmoving colossus. Seeing that face again, Jean thought his heart might flutter right out of his rib cage, a frantic moth drawn to the light. He pushed Mikasa's hand away distractedly and shouldered past her and Armin, feeling an unearthly thread tugging him towards the crouching Titan.

He hadn't imagined the resemblance. Even in this darkness, even with its head tilted down in repose, even though it had been many months since the last nightmarish image of his friend's mutilated face had been burned into his memory, the Titan was unmistakable.

"Yes," said Jean. "That's the one."

"Look at those patterns of exposed muscle!" Hanji squealed. "It really isn't like any regular Titan! And since the only ones that looked like that were Shifters…"

Jean was about to protest that he _knew_ that his Titan wasn't a Shifter, couldn't be a Shifter (_because if he was_, Jean thought, _he would have known me, would have given some sign, wouldn't have dropped me like a shiny pebble he had lost interest in_) but felt a tap on his shoulder interrupting him. He turned to see Armin with a very conspiratorial expression of urgency, and so followed him, sidling along the branch to the trunk of the tree, where the recruits were gathered.

"It's better if they think of him as a Shifter, Jean," said the boy quietly when they were out of the officers' earshot. "They wouldn't have gone out on this mission if there hadn't been suspicion that he was."

Armin's tone struck a chord of suspicion in Jean's mind. It was as if he knew that the Titan was not what the officers thought. "You sound like you know something about this that you're keeping a secret!" he hissed. "Spill it, Armin!"

"It's nothing you haven't suspected already," Armin said defensively. "And it was just a guess for me as well! But… seeing him… I realized that I was right. That _you_ were right."

Jean crossed his arms. "Right about what?"

"That the Titan you saw was familiar to you," finished Eren. "To all of us. That's why the others came along."

"Armin told us," said Connie. He scrubbed his boot on the wood awkwardly. "Anyway, you're not the only one who's seen a Titan that looks too much like… someone they know."

Sasha nodded fervently. "We understand what you're going through, Jean. Marco was our friend too."

Jean's eyes tightened with repressed torment, the tears aching for release. He realized something that had been bothering his subconscious for some time: the others were referring to the Titan as a 'he', not an 'it'. If Jean had been like Armin, then that slip-up would have betrayed them.

"Yeah, he was… Marco was pretty much everybody's friend," Jean said, choking on the words. "He was that kind of guy…" He gritted his teeth. "I'm sorry you had to hear it from Armin, though. I should have just told you. But… how did you figure it out?"

Armin fixed his eyes on a branch slightly to the right of Jean's ear. "Freckles," he said. "You mentioned it a couple of times and you got this look on your face when you did… I remember you used to talk about Marco's freckles a lot—"

"What!?" Jean exclaimed, turning red. "N-no, I didn't! That's absurd! Why would I do a stupid thing like that?" He scowled. "Okay, maybe I called him a few nicknames and… and joked about it once or twice, but… But that's not like the way you said it!"

"Come on," said Eren, and Jean blinked at his unlikely savior. "It looks like the captain's decided what he wants to do."

The recruits shuffled back over to the stout middle of the branch. Levi had drawn his swords. "We're going down," he announced.

Hanji caught the captain's elbow. "Permission to net and capture?" she asked, and the glint in her eyes told everyone that even if she didn't get permission, she would likely go ahead with the plan anyway, orders be damned.

"Be careful you don't wake it," was all Levi said. "I wouldn't want to make it cranky."

The recruits spread along the branch, crouching with the nets in their hands, ready to be unfurled. "Wait…" mumbled Sasha, so quietly that only Jean and Connie, standing next to her, could have heard. "I have a… a bad hunch. I don't know what it is, but…"

"Well, we can't really hold up the whole plan because you've got a bad hunch!" Connie protested. "It's got to be something you can actually put a finger to!" He sighed and patted his friend's back. "We'll be careful, all right?"

In position, they readied themselves for launch, linking the long sides of their net pieces together with a set of clips. Levi gave a terse countdown and then sliced his hand down through the air: a signal flag. Jean swallowed his apprehension and jumped.

The net trailed behind them like a sextet of very crude, metal-studded bridal veils, tied onto the tails of a pair of bolts, each cocked in a handheld crossbow. In the air, Jean twisted and shot downwards, burying the end of the net in the earth. Now, once they got over to the other side, the Titan would be covered, making Hanji and Levi's next passes to pin its wrists and ankles a whole lot easier.

Except the net was rippling upwards. Someone had broken formation. Jean whipped his head to his side and registered the sight of Sasha twisting in the air, her cables buried in the branches above them, her eyes shining with alarm. "Its muscles are clenched!" she shouted down at them. "It's not sleeping!"

The giant form below them was already moving.

Jean dropped the net and fired his cables into the nearest tree, swinging in a swift arc as the Titan surged to its feet. "Plan B!" he yelled, his boots skidding on the trunk. "Take to the canopy! Do it!"

He watched as the others scuttled up to the crown of the forest like frightened squirrels, outlined and sparkling from the moonlight. The beast below was turning, dazedly twisting its torso around, one arm slung out for balance. Jean gauged his timing and then jumped, right before the Titan's fist scraped against the tree he'd been hanging against. Splinters of wood burst out in a spray. The Titan seemed confused as to why its hand came back steaming, with scraped knuckles prickling with wood slivers, and Jean took his chance to go the only way that was safest – namely, up.

He headed for the others, who were hung from the branches like ornaments. "Some Gentle Titan!" scoffed Connie. "It's gone crazy!"

"I told you I had a bad feeling!" Sasha screeched, elbowing Connie hard. "When I passed by the Titan, I saw its shoulders were shaking. It wasn't hibernating, it was holding itself completely still!"

"I can't believe I missed that!" Hanji said, sounding very disappointed with herself. "Sasha, you might well have saved us all."

And then, what had happened to Armin in the dark happened to Jean as well. His left hook bit at a bundle of leaves and then whizzed back into his belt, leaving him at the mercy of the momentum from one attached cable. He only had the time to register that he was no longer in control before he crashed into a tree, dislodging his other hook.

Jean fell directly towards the Titan's shoulders. He thought for a frightening instant that it would turn its head up and let him drop right into its mouth, and when it lifted its face to the sky, its jaws parted, Jean feared that he was about to be proven right. But instead, the Titan screamed. It was not the roar of a predator, but a long, agonized keen that tore out of its throat, a cry accompanied by a face scrunched with pain. To Jean, it was like a thunderclap, like a jolt of lightning to his heart.

He caught himself from his fall by aiming at the trees bordering the clearing and slid to a halt on the moss. Had Levi and Hanji already swooped in to slice the Titan's ankles? And if so, was that really what it was fussing about? Titans never did show pain, even when whole body parts were blown off. But then he looked, and realized that the plan wasn't to capture the Titan anymore. A dark shape was whizzing upwards, and a pair of cables buried themselves in the Titan's neck.

Jean moved on instinct. He flew forwards like a slingshot, raised his swords. He saw the Titan's neck approaching, and then landed against it, feet first, his blades crashing into the attacker's just before they cut into the flesh below. "Don't!" Jean shouted. "Please!"

"It's too late," said Mikasa, her dark eyes flat and chilled with resolve. "I won't let this put anyone's life in danger."

_No, you just don't want to put _Eren's_ life in danger!_ Jean thought furiously, pressing back against Mikasa's swords. _But you're not the only one who's got someone they care about! _"Dammit… just… give him a chance!" he cried. "I don't think he's attacking us!" He wobbled uncertainly as the Titan lurched beneath them, and pounded the ground with its fists. Its skin was rippling and twitching, and Jean felt his boots slip on sweat. "Don't be a hypocrite, Mikasa; you'd be doing the same thing if it was Eren!"

Levi swung around onto the Titan's shoulder. "Kirschtein, what's going on?" said the captain in a low, dangerous tone. "Explain yourself!"

"I… I can't let you kill this Titan yet!" Jean struggled for words as the Titan thrashed below them. He clung to a large lock of its black hair. Remembering what Armin had said, he added, "Captain, please! This whole mission would be wasted! We can't let humanity lose any possible assets at this point!"

"If it kills anyone, then it's on your head," said Levi coldly, sheathing his blades. "But I think since you'll be the one it kills first, you'll escape that guilt." He swung away, heading for the trees where the others were dangling, frozen.

Jean heard the others shouting from above. "Mikasa! Jean! Get back here!" Eren was screaming. "What are you trying to do?"

"Go," Jean muttered to Mikasa. "Protect Eren… I know that's the only person you really care about."

The girl didn't react to this, except with a long, searching stare. "I'll back you up if anything goes wrong," she finally said. "Good luck."

"We can't just leave him down there!" Armin cried, as Mikasa flew back up to his level.

Jean tuned them out. He thumped a fist against the Titan's neck. "Marco!" he shouted hoarsely. "Dammit, Marco, I know you're in there!" A stabbing agony shot through his chest, not physical pain, but an emotion so strong it felt like a sword slipped between his ribs. "Please, Marco! Wake up!"

* * *

_"Marco! I know you're in there!"_

I think I'm dreaming again, but instead of flying, I'm falling. It feels like my flesh is unraveling, a torn tapestry of tendons. One moment, I'm spasming on cold tiled floor, and the next, it's dirt and dry leaves. I cling to the only thing I can, which is a voice, shouting my name.

_"Please, Marco! Wake up!"_

The pain is making me dizzy, delirious. I am under the deluded impression that I am large as a building, and all the people are like rats scurrying around my feet.

"Someone get over and help this kid!" the voice yells. "Who let him out of his bed?"

My bed? I have no bed, except the moss in the forest. And I'm so tired now, but I can't sleep. My head is a hotbed of magma pressing against the crust of my skull. I'm choking on steam and foamy spit, and bile from my stomach that lurches up and fills my nose and mouth.

Please, someone, anyone… make this stop. I want to pass out, I want to fall into this damp, smothering darkness that surrounds me, but the moon is too bright, and someone keeps on knocking at the gate. Don't they know I'm not home?

"It's okay," the voice says, sounding panicked. "You're gonna be all right… Someone get Doctor Jaeger! Marco's having a seizure! You'll be okay, it's all okay… Hurry, dammit! What's taking you idiots so long? It's gonna be all right, Marco, I promise. You're going to be fine… Thank god you're here—_help him!_"

* * *

Jean felt the Titan's hand swinging up before he saw it, and he tried to dodge it, but his reflexes were not as good as his perception. He felt a blunt, bruising strike to his chest, a disorienting sense of acceleration, and then his back hit the ground.

The Titan had smacked him off its neck. That stung, not just because it literally hurt like hell, but because it felt like a kind of betrayal. Lights popped in Jean's vision as he stared up at the kneeling figure.

It occurred to Jean that the Titan hadn't intended to hit him. For one thing, it didn't seem to be paying attention to any of its surroundings. It was clutching its head, its fingers tangled in its hair, the heels of its palms pressed into its eyes sockets. It looked – Jean almost wanted to laugh, except his guilt and sympathy prevented him – it looked like a person with a really, really bad headache.

Above him, the others were still shouting. They were going to give him a headache of his own if they kept it up.

"He's down! Jean's down!" It was Armin, his voice cracking. "Execute Plan C!"

"I don't really think you're in any position to be giving orders, Arlert," said Levi.

"Apologies, Captain!" Armin exclaimed. "But… please hurry!"

Hanji's voice. "Well, he did say _please_, Levi. And just look at the poor thing! Jean's right, he isn't attacking, he's writhing in agony! There's something the matter with him!"

Jean stared up at the Titan who looked so much like his friend. It had been just about a week since he'd last looked into those eyes from this position on the ground. "Hello, again," he whispered.

For a second, he thought it met his gaze.

Then there were twin sprays of blood from its heels, and it collapsed forwards, its head crashing to the ground just beside him.

Stillness fell over the clearing.

"Marco…" Jean whispered. He wanted to reach out and touch the Titan's face, but fear held him back. He sat up on his knees and stared into the wide, familiar eyes, at the spots of flesh that dotted its cheekbones. "You remember me, don't you, Freckle-Face?"

The Titan was staring right through Jean, into the dark, but it let out a row of steam puffs through the holes spreading out from the corners of its mouth.

"It's me… Jean…" He pointed a thumb to his chest. "I'm your friend, okay?"

Nets came swirling down from the sky like snowflakes. They blanketed the fallen Titan, but it did not even seem to notice. Its eyes flickered to Jean's face for a second time, and then slid out of focus once more.

Jean took a few hesitant steps forward, and lifted his hand. "What happened to you, Marco?" he murmured, though he wasn't really looking for a response. The Titan wasn't looking at him, but it seemed soothed by the sound of his voice, so he just kept talking. "Your head hurts, doesn't it? You know, I remember one time I had a really bad headache and I had to close all the curtains and lie in bed with a blanket over my eyes…"

His palm tentatively pressed against the Titan's temple. "Sometimes the world gets too much for your brain to handle," he whispered. "And it hurts to see, or hear. You just want to go into a dark, hidden place and never come out."

The others had gathered behind him, staring with amazement at the young man kneeling beside the Titan.

Jean brushed his finger against the inner corner of the Titan's eye. A warm, bucket-sized tear dripped over his hand and fell into the moss.

"When I found your body at Trost, it hurt my eyes, just like that headache," said Jean quietly. "I hated the sun and the light for showing me something I didn't ever want to see."

Slowly, the Gentle Titan's breathing grew soft and steady. It smiled vacantly.

"Back then, I felt like I wanted to stab my own eyes out," Jean muttered. "But… that's when I realized I couldn't do it. I had tried to be blind to everything… to the suffering… but no one really is. Even if I pretended I couldn't see, I'd still be tormented all my life. I realized what a stupid, ass-backwards thing it was, trying to get as far away from the Titans as possible when there were people like you in this world." He sighed. "I don't even know if that makes any sense, but… it's why I'm here. So it must be real."

No reaction from the Titan, but it lay in the dirt, trusting as a lamb. It made no move towards Jean, did not struggle in its bonds.

A hand pressed down on Jean's shoulder. "I think you've proven to us beyond a shadow of a doubt that this Titan is special," said Levi. "But you definitely have some explaining to do."

* * *

Softness surrounds me. I feel a damp, warm cloth being pressed to my forehead.

"Marco? Can you hear me?"

I recognize that voice.

"Jean?" I mumble. "'S that you?"

The washcloth smacks against my face. I've been chastised. "Yeah, it's me, you idiot," my intern tells me. "What the hell were you playing at? The doctors said you were wandering around the halls! I found your sorry ass twitching about in your own puke on the floor! You know that stuff got all over my clothes, right?"

My eyes flicker open, and I see Jean Kirschtein bending over me. His hair is in disarray, and his eyes are rimmed with the blue-black marks of sleep deprivation. Morning glow wafts in through the windows. Jean must have stayed by my side through the night. I notice that he's changed my bandages again.

"You didn't have to… hold me…" I whisper, ashamed. "You got all messy…"

"You think I was going to let you bash your own brains out on the floor?" Jean demands. He punches the pillow next to my head, an expression of helpless frustration. "Of course I held you down, moron! I held you until the seizure stopped and then I carried you back here, to your room." He throws himself into the chair at my bedside and, bitterly ensconced, crosses his arms. "Man, you were so light… like a rag-doll sack of bones. Someone needs to start filling you up with solid food."

"I can't wait for that," I tell Jean. "All my energy goes into growing, so there isn't much left over for anything else. I really miss eating."

He's jiggling his knee, badly distressed by something. "No one wanted to help me, can you believe that? Crazy people! They must have all thought you were going to grow an extra head and bite their feet off!"

I feel guilty for causing all this trouble. Freedom is important, but I have to remember that my life is more than just my own. I'm a beacon of hope for a lot of people.

Reaching out with my good arm, I cover Jean's hand with my own. "Thank you," I say to him, with all sincerity. "I'm very lucky to have you."

He looks embarrassed, like he wants to pull away. "Yeah, well, where would I be if my study subject died in my first week here?" he grumbles. "My life, my career, my ambitions… everything would be screwed a thousand times over!"

"I see," I say, because I'm at a loss for anything else. I rub the tip of my nose and settle back in the sheets. My bandages aren't the only things that were changed in the night. My upper body is bare, with a set of clear rubber probes stuck to it, monitoring my vital signs, and I think I'm wearing a clean pair of trousers as well.

Eventually Jean turns around and goes back to distractedly petting me with the washcloth. "Besides, Marco, you're a good guy," he tells me, sounding slightly apologetic. "I didn't want anything to happen to you."

"You're a good person, too," I respond, because I know it's true. "Even if you don't think it, you are." I laugh weakly. "I bet I'll prove it to you someday."

"Nah, nah… Too easy." He waves a dismissive hand. "Don't kid yourself. I know I'm doing all this for my own good. But still, I couldn't let you get hurt. The world needs more people like you, and less people like me."

"What?" I croak. "Scared to make a little wager?"

Jean smirks and leans over my bed. "Fine," he tells me, sticking out a hand. "You're on. If you can get me to do one entirely selfless thing within a month, I'll give you one hundred euros, or the local equivalent."

"Marks will do," I say haughtily, feeling the need to express some patriotic pride. It was only recently that Europe returned to national currencies, after all, following the great economic crash of the 2020s. Everyone still uses the euro, but the deutschmark is making a comeback.

We shake on it, and then Jean claps a hand to his coat pocket, where a smartphone is buzzing. "Shit. Looks like I've got to run." He ruffles my hair. "Catch you later, Freckle-Face." As he swans out, I feign disinterest, mostly to disguise my reddening cheeks.

It seems as though I've made a new friend.


	5. The Hole in the Wall, Part 1

**Author's Note: I apologize that this chapter is mostly action and plot, unless that's what you like, in which case... it's your lucky day! But don't worry, everyone else. The past few chapters have been pretty much setting up the way the rest of this story is going to go, which is more Jean/Marco oriented, (although many other characters will be having their day in the spotlight, especially in the hospital!).**

* * *

Commander Erwin had planned well for the event that the mission was a failure, but Jean wasn't entirely sure what they would do now that it was a success.

The squad bunched themselves together, keeping a wary eye on the Gentle Titan. Jean was sure that it could have broken its bonds if it wanted, but it didn't seem inclined. Instead it watched them trustingly, sometimes shifting its position to get comfortable under the nets.

"What are our orders, Captain?" asked Eren, with noticeable apprehension.

"We can't leave this poor young fellow all tied up through the night!" Hanji butted in. "What if the other Titans found him and devoured him?"

Levi glared at her. "But how do we get it back? Lead it on a chain?"

"I suppose we could try to see if it can obey simple commands," said Hanji thoughtfully, tapping her chin. "Huh." Then she grinned and darted towards the Titan. "Hello there, my good friend!" she exclaimed. "What was it that Jean named you? Ah… Marco! An interesting choice."

The Titan's head lolled back, but it seemed unresponsive.

"I didn't name him," Jean said loudly. "That's who he is. His name is Marco Bodt."

His tone got through Hanji's haze of fascination. She tilted her head towards him. "And what _precisely_ do you mean by that?"

"He means there's a human inside," said Levi flatly. "How long have you known of this fifth Titan Shifter, Kirschtein?"

The captain's tone was accusatory and harsh, at least as much as Levi could manage while still sounding tired of life. Jean went puce, and was about to blurt out a protest, when Mikasa silenced him with a quick look. "Marco Bodt was a member of the 104th training division, like us," she told them. "He was ranked seventh in our class. He was a good friend to all of us but… he died in the Battle of Trost. During the cleanup, Jean found his body. We were sure that it had been burned with the rest of them."

"But that Titan looks just like him!" Armin added. "I knew Marco quite well, and I can tell you for sure that I've never seen such a strong resemblance to a human in a Titan, saving possibly Annie's Titan form. But if he is a Shifter, he's lost control of it. He acts more or less like any Titan, except he just… doesn't seem to want to eat people."

Hanji took an experimental few steps closer to the Gentle Titan. When it failed to react, she inched even further. "I'd say that seems to be the case!" The woman leaned forward and waved at the Titan's massive eye. "Can you understand me?" she said loudly and deliberately, like speaking to a child. "Are you, in fact, the recruit known as Marco Bodt? Just nod or shake your head, if you can!"

Nothing from the Titan. It seemed to be vaguely intrigued by the enthusiastic auburn-haired woman waving in front of it, but its blank, slight smile was empty of intelligence or comprehension.

Armin was fidgeting. He urgently tugged at Eren's sleeve. "I'm worried," the boy whispered. "The forest seems… too quiet."

"It wasn't when that… when Marco…" Eren was clearly still struggling to accept the idea that the Titan on the ground could be their own teammate. "When the Gentle Titan was having its fit?" He swallowed. "You don't think its cries might have alerted other Titans to this spot!? Like what happened with the Female Titan?"

Most of the others had heard him. All eyes were now on the high trees surrounding the glen, searching for the gargantuan shadows that might be ready to descend upon them. As the group converged into a protective huddle, Connie and Sasha backed up into one another, and then hastily apologized. Their words felt out of place in the ringing silence.

Jean tried to stay calm. Which was not, he thought, going to last very long. "Well, I can't feel any footsteps," he said, with false assurance. "You'd think we'd notice if a whole herd of Titans came charging through the woods, right?" His teeth were chattering. "R-right? Anyway, it's nighttime! Titans don't move around at night! Um. Except when they do…" he finished lamely. "But… they don't usually!"

"Permission to use our lanterns, Captain?" Sasha squeaked. When everyone turned to her, she said, "I have a bad feeling!"

She'd been right once before, at least. They had learned to trust Sasha's instincts by now. And the moon, bright though it was, had been covered by clouds, removing the only source of light they had. Levi nodded curtly. "Granted."

In succession, the shutters on the lamps were flicked open, and the recruits fumbled in their robes for strikers. The wicks hissed like snakes, and tongues of orange light crept out into the clearing as the lanterns were raised high.

Not a word was spoken. For Jean, at least, it was because he was too terrified to utter a sound.

All around them, on the edges of the glen: grinning, wide-eyed, waiting like statues, pressed up against one another. Small ones peeking out from underfoot, big ones with their scalps scraping against the tips of the trees, heads lolling slightly, alight with blissful anticipation; a fence, no, a full, unbroken wall of Titans.

* * *

_ I dreamt once of being very young and growing up in a different sort of world, a simple place, a world of high stone horizons. And in the dream, I was immersed in the singular experience of kneeling at the base of one such horizon, feeling the love of the goddess Sina infusing my veins. I didn't understand what it was I was worshipping – a wall to most, but to me it might have been the edge of the world. I had never been to the interior, but I knew it was where the King lived. I wanted to meet the King someday; no one I knew ever had._

_ One by one all around me, heads lift, knees straighten, and hands extend. The people here are yearning towards the wall, yet they restrain themselves, giving the impression that they fear to touch such divinity. But to me, the wall could never be an object of fear, only love. I want to show the others that there is nothing to hold back from. So I bound to my feet and push through the hesitant crowd of worshippers. My outstretched palms kiss the stone. I'm shocked and pleased to find that Wall Sina is warm as sunshine. Divine energy must be emanating from within. I lay my cheek against the wall, and the heat feels like a mother's embrace._

_ I can sense a presence. It doesn't strike me as odd, that I can hear something murmuring in the back of my mind, something rumbling and soft and ancient. After all, it is a goddess._

_ I'm too little to realize the importance of what I've done – touching the wall during a blessing – but the crowd is gasping, muttering, twittering like a flock of flighty sparrows. I barely notice them. My eyes are closed with innocent bliss. Sina is with me._

_ My knees crumple; my fingers sift through the crumbling dirt at the base of the wall. It smells like spice and dust, and it's marvelous. Curiously, there's something buried in the earth. I scoop out a handful of soil and sieve it through my hand. The object is uncovered._

_ It looks like a slice of hard, white cheese, a rectangle with rounded edges, thin as cardboard. It's smooth, though not as smooth as polished metal, somewhat waxy, and slightly bendable. There is a very faint faded print on the surface, watercolor hues that betray the echo of a picture that I can't make out, and writing I can't read. At my age, I can only distinguish a few letters, and one clear word. It's the name of the wall._

_ The card belongs to the goddess. I am in awe. And, being seven, I cannot bring myself to leave it behind, sacred though it might be. It's pretty, and reminds me of a badge. I tuck the solid slice of holy white into my trouser pocket._

Now why should I remember that? I yawn and stretch my one arm. Oh! It could have been daily residue, like what Freud says is always on the surface of dreams. He'd probably have a lot to say about naming a wall after my hospital wing, too. Perhaps I'd been thinking about the day I would finally be given my ID and begin to explore the rest of the hospital on my own. Or, not really on my own; they've already got a wheelchair ready, and I'm sure Jean would be recruited to be my handler – he'll hate that, but I'm happy to have a constant companion.

I would have been let out today, I think, if it hadn't been for my stint outside my room and the accident that followed.

There's a rapping at my door. "Who is it?" I say.

A muffled voice from beyond. "It's Doctor Zoe. Mind if I come in?"

"Of course not," I tell her, and the door bursts open. Doctor Zoe enters the room like a whirlwind. I've heard about her from the other patients, and apparently she was there when they first brought me in, but I haven't spoken much to her. She's one of the most enthusiastic researchers here, they say, and you can just tell by the way she looks at her patients that she's utterly, whole-heartedly devoted to the study.

"Hi, Marco!" she says cheerfully, but there's steel in her eyes, precise and so fine it cuts through you without you feeling a thing, like a surgical probe on the tip of a needle. "You're feeling better after that awful seizure, I hope?"

"Y-yes, Doctor Zoe—"

"Call me Hanji," she interrupts, and wags a finger in my face. "You know, you've been giving us a lot of trouble."

I wince. "I… have?" Oh dear. I really should never have left my bed. I'm about to explode into apologies, but Hanji cuts me off yet again.

"Yes, the good kind!" she exclaims.

"There's a good kind of trouble?" I say, confused. I thought this was going to be a lecture, but it's turning out very differently.

"Of course," Hanji tells me, grabbing my bandaged arm with a swift, agile movement and weighing it in her hands. "Every day you continue to surprise us, Marco… Incredible! It's as if your bones were hollow as a bird's."

"Are they?" I nervously giggle.

"Well, the X-rays seem to say that they're coming in well," she says, rubbing her chin. "Density isn't up to standard yet, but the muscles are very tightly knit. I wonder how strong it will be?" Her eyes sparkle. "Care to arm wrestle?"

I press myself back into the pillow, a little intimidated by her offer. "We-ell," I say.

"Never mind that," Hanji continues briskly. "Let's check your reflexes, shall we?" She withdraws a triangular rubber hammer, and presses a pair of fingers to my armpit. "Hm… one, two." She taps twice. I think my arm twitches, but I can't be sure. I want it to turn out well, so when she moves on to my wrist, I try to relax my muscles as much as I can. Living around scientists, I learned all about the dangers of false positives and placebos. If I think that my wrist will move, I might move it unconsciously anyway. "One, two," says Hanji. "Very nice! It seems those nerve clusters are working well. Can you move your arms?"

I can, but it hurts dully, and it makes my head throb. I fear that overuse of those nerves will bring on another seizure, and I tell Hanji so, but she waves away my concerns.

"As long as you don't do anything strenuous or related to balance, you'll be fine," she says. "Your inner ear fluid hasn't come in yet on your right side, so when your one ear is trying to compensate, it plays havoc with your sensory nerves, and your brain overloads."

Ah. That explains it. I'd been running, hadn't I, right before I had my seizure? That was certainly something that required balance.

And then I remember just why I'd been running in the first place. "Doctor Zoe—um, Hanji? I heard something when I was out in the corridor… at first I thought it couldn't have been real, but…" After clearing my throat I manage to say, feeling slightly embarrassed by how suspicious I sound, "I thought I heard someone screaming. It was as if they were being tortured."

Hanji's glasses gleam as she lifts her head. "Oh?" she says.

"N-not that I'd think that was… what was actually going on," I correct myself hastily. "I'm just trying to give you a sense of what I heard. This voice… it sounded very scared and it was hard to make out what they were saying—"

"Well, that's certainly an frightening hallucination to have!" exclaims the doctor, and she presses her ear to the top of my head as if she's trying to hear my thoughts from the outside. "Hm… everything seems good there… No screaming right now."

I smile meekly. "I didn't really think I was hallucinating," I offer, though I am guilty at having to correct someone as knowledgeable as Hanji. "Listen, if I was imagining things, then where did that hole in the wall come from?"

She taps her large nose as if pondering the question. Then she brightens up. "What hole?" she asks. "You don't mean the door, do you?"

Patiently, I try to explain myself. "Not _that_ one, the one that isn't supposed to be there. It was about a meter wide. I saw something punch right through the wall."

Doctor Zoe crinkles her forehead. "Well, I certainly didn't notice any hole in the wall, but if you'll tell me where it was, I can go out and take a picture of the hallway with my phone. You'll see; there's no hole there."

I nod and explain that it had been down the hall from the water cooler. I want to allay my fears. The doctor exits the room and returns soon after with her smartphone out. She tosses it to me; I assume as an unofficial test of reflexes, which I fail. It drops to my lap a whole second before my left hand reaches the spot over the air where it would have been.

Sighing, I unfold the filmy screen on my lap and scroll through the images. "This painting," I say, pointing at the wall. "I think it was in the spot where the wall was broken?"

Hanji laughs. "That explains it, then. You must have hallucinated it; otherwise that painting would have been broken too."

Come to think of it, I do remember this painting being there in the hallway. It's an abstract close-up of the remains of a broken, graffiti-covered wall – the Berlin Wall, come to think of it, though it isn't one of the usual shots. A picture of a wall on an actual wall. That's pretty funny. Or maybe it only feels funny because it means there aren't sinister occurrences taking place in the Sina Wing.

"I think you might be right," I say, relieved. "Although since that means I'm going crazy, I guess it's not such a good thing."

"Oh, I think it's probably natural," Hanji tells me, amused. "Have you been having very vivid dreams recently?"

"Yes, yes," I say earnestly. "That happens to me a lot. Castles and noble knights fighting monsters and boxes that make you fly. They feel so real."

"Well then that's probably just more of your brain trying to repair itself and catalogue your subconscious." She grins. "I'm not an expert on the neuropsychology of sleep, but I'll refer you to Professor Pixis, since that's his area." She chuckles to herself. "That's probably because all Dot does is sleep. It's his passion." And then she leans over my bed, looking from side to side. "Between you and me," she whispers, "he's a little eccentric."

Hanji Zoe thinks that this Dot Pixis is eccentric. Deciding to choose my words diplomatically, I whisper back, "I think your opinion on the matter would hold a lot of weight. Thanks for warning me."

"No problem." Then she rummages around in her pocket. "Say, Marco?"

"Yes?" I respond. I have no idea what's coming next.

"I have a present for you," she tells me. "For being such an excellently fascinating case. We've decided that we wanted to see more of how you would do outside of your room." She withdraws a white plastic ID card and dangles it in front of my face. "What do you say, huh?"

"Yes, please!" I exclaim. I'm ecstatic. "B-but I didn't think I'd be let out after what happened!"

"Oh, don't worry," Hanji tells me, "you'll be under close supervision at all times. Your intern will make sure nothing goes wrong. You know, the other board members were dead against it, but I persisted! After seeing just how far you got, all on your own…" She clasps her hands together. "I was amazed! You're doing so well, and improving so much more quickly than anyone could have predicted!"

"But… then I threw up all over the floor and nearly died," I remind her. It sounds funny, me putting things that bluntly, and I wonder if Jean has rubbed off on me already. "I mean… things didn't go _that_ well, right?"

"Ah, but, _regardless!_" Hanji holds up a triumphant finger. "It was quite an accomplishment! Within a week or two, you'll be ready to begin physical therapy, and we'll finally begin to see all of our hard work paying off!"

"Thanks for everything," I say, again resorting to tact, despite my doubts. "I'm glad to hear you have so much faith in me."

Then Hanji presses the ID card into my good hand. My fingers close around it and the world blossoms before my eyes, its petals opening, a jewel of dawn covered in fresh dew, ready to face the day. I'm free.

"Of course, you'll have to wait a few days to rest and recover," Hanji says, and I dismally watch my flower close up and bow its crown to darkness.

"Of course," I repeat.

I close my eyes as the doctor resumes her diagnostics. Perhaps if I wish hard for a way out into the open air, I'll dream it up, and that will almost be as good as the real thing.

* * *

The squad clung to one another like deer cornered by a pack of wolves.

"Why aren't they moving?" Eren choked out. "What the hell are they waiting for?"

"Who even cares?" Jean snapped. "You _want_ them to attack?"

Connie drew his swords. "I say we get out of here while we still can! There's a gap between those two fifteen-meter class Titans that we can probably take!"

"Never mind that!" snarled Eren. "I'm going to transform and kill them all!"

They all looked at the Gentle Titan, peacefully nestled in the grass, and then they turned to Jean, who cringed. "I think… if we make a move, they might go after us," he muttered. "And… fine! I don't want to put Marco in danger! B-but why are you dumbasses looking at me; it's not my call—argh!" A crackling of twigs and dry needles made the group start, their strained nerves easily plucked at by sudden sounds. As they whipped around, Jean glared at them defensively from the forest floor. "I tripped!" he protested, scrabbling to his feet. "That's all!"

And then Jean fell back down when the rustling started up once more. It was not a sound, he thought numbly, that a human-sized creature could make.

The Gentle Titan was shifting, guiltily stretching its bound limbs. The nets ripped out of the soil as the Titan stood. It let its bonds remain around its shoulders, an apologetic escapee, and took a booming step forwards. A shy smile danced across its features as it stared up at the sky. Steam huffed out of its mouth.

"Shit…" Jean breathed. "Marco, what the hell are you doing?"

It seemed as though the Gentle Titan was being drawn towards something, though it didn't know what it sought. It came closer and closer to the edge of the clearing.

"They'll tear it to pieces!" Eren cried. "We have to do something!"

The Gentle Titan paid no mind, of course, swaying wonderingly towards the trees and the blockade of pink flesh. It raised its hands to push aside the first of the Titans.

"Marco, _don't!_" Jean yelled. "Don't touch—"

Before the Gentle Titan could lay a finger on one of the Titans ringing the clearing, they parted. Huge feet shuffled backwards out of the walking Titan's way, making a wide pathway for it to exit, the mindless grins still plastered on their faces.

The squad stared at one another in amazement, then Jean drew one of his blades and pointed. "_Follow! That! Titan!_" he declared. "It's our only hope of getting out!" If this crazy Marco-Titan could keep the others from attacking it, and from attacking the squad, then he wasn't going to miss this chance to get out in one piece. He raced after the Gentle Titan on foot, hoping that the others would stop gawping like idiots and get moving before their window of opportunity closed.

"I don't really think he's in any position to give orders," Levi said, rolling his eyes at the lunacy of these younger recruits. "However, I'll take his actions as suggestion. Everyone, move your asses!"

It was the most unnerving thing in the world: running a gauntlet of massive bodies looming over the tiny circle of clear ground and closing the gap behind them as they chased after the oblivious Gentle Titan, whose footsteps sent shudders through the ground. When Jean looked up, it seemed as though the Titans were growing taller, arching up into the zenith like demonic church buttresses, their faces just barely illuminated by the cluster of lanterns passing among them. The Titans were never easy to face, but now, standing without attacking, simply leering down at the humans, they were positively bone-chilling.

How could there possibly be this many Titans in one forest? How could they all be awake at night?

"Is he controlling them somehow?" said Connie as he puffed along. "Wait… maybe hanging around Marco like this, we ended up with Titan smell all over us? They might think we're Titans too, since it's dark and they can't see?"

"What are you talking about, Connie?" said Eren. "I never heard of Titan smell rubbing off on people!"

"Well, it's not so odd!" Sasha said, coming to her friend's defense. "That Mike guy could smell Titans, couldn't he?"

The squad was falling behind the Gentle Titan, whose strides were lengthening. "Everyone switch to your backup gas tanks and drop the spares!" called Hanji. The slight relief that came from discarding two metal cylinders did pick up a few knees, but the truth was, maneuver gear was not made to be used for long distances on the ground. It was too burdensome, and it was holding them back.

Armin seemed to be having the most trouble. He had been one of the first to follow Jean, having realized their hope spot just as quickly, but little by little he was being passed by the others, and the slow procession of Titans following them was drawing nearer and nearer to his heels. It felt like racing a toxic tidal wave to shore.

"Will there be no end to them?" muttered Mikasa, catching Armin's wrist and tugging him along. "Captain! Should we attempt to use our gear?"

Levi did not seem to be having much difficulty keeping pace with the Gentle Titan, but he was staying in the middle of the group to keep an eye on them. "If a Titan grabs your cable, you're done for," he said flatly. "Look at them. They're not peaceful; they're waiting to attack. And if just one cable goes outside of this circle…"

"Then we could try hitching a ride with the Gentle Titan itself?" Armin offered, wheezing. "I know we don't to risk provoking it, but… it doesn't seem very provoke-able!"

"I have a _simpler_ idea!" yelled Jean. "We're heading pretty much back the same way as we came, right?"

"Judging by the stars, I'd say so," agreed Hanji. "What's your idea?"

"_Horses!_" Jean coughed. "Everybody whistles, the horses come, and we ride straight out of here!"

"That works for me!" Hanji told the others. "Levi, it's your call! What are we riding out of here, horse or Titan?"

The look that Levi awarded them carried the bold, redolent taste of, _Do you really think that is even a question worth asking?_ with subtle tones of _That means horses, in case you scatterbrains didn't know._ He put his fingers to his lips and a lusty _pheweeeeeeet!_ came out.

Soon the others were frantically copying him, trying to gather up enough lungpower to whistle loud enough. A panicked minute of this followed, while the Titans behind them drew ever closer, and then, in a wake of dirt clods and jingling harnesses, the Recon Corps cavalry arrived, galloping through the legs of the Titans. Half a cavalry, at any rate, since the horses were missing their riders, but it was as heartening as stories made it out to be.

Jean grabbed the reins of his steed and, with one final burst of energy, swung himself up into the saddle. "Hey! How come there's only seven of them? Someone's missing a horse!"

Captain Levi reached down and hauled Eren up into the saddle by the boy's collar. "Not anymore," he said coolly.

And then, Jean didn't really focus on anything but the thudding of hooves at a canter behind the Gentle Titan, and that Titan itself. Jean couldn't keep his eyes off it… off _him_. The week of preparation for the mission had given him time to prepare himself for seeing his friend's kind features again.

Even as a mindless Titan, he was kind. Even without any shred of humanity, he commanded respect and brought order to a frightening situation. He did all this without realizing; it was as ingrained in who he was as his damn freckles. And he had saved Jean's life by distracting the Titans for a second time. Jean wanted to sob out loud. It was so… so _Marco._

Ever since the beginning of training, Marco had been a stabilizing force. He'd pulled Armin out of the trees when the boy inevitably got his cables tangled up, and he'd spent hours of his own teaching their less combat-able teammates how to catch themselves when they fell. He'd even made secret nightly rounds once or twice in the very beginning of their time together, bringing warm milk and kindness to the cabins full of frightened, homesick children.

But as the Gentle Titan, he was lost in a world of his own, and Jean felt a glow of longing surround the Titan's movements. _What are you looking for so urgently, Marco?_ Jean thought to the Titan, who he knew could not hear him even if he had spoken. _You never asked a damn thing for yourself but now… now, with no one else in your world but yourself, you feel something missing. _ A stirring of purpose was gathering in his chest. _And whatever it is you need, Marco, I'll help you find it! I owe you that much, and more._

The labyrinthine forest came to an end, and with it, the wall of Titans. Only the one emerged from the gloom, embracing the fresh, clear air; the rest hung back and watched through the slits between the trunks as the squad exited the forest.

"The Gentle Titan's still heading north!" Hanji informed them all. "If we can herd it in the right direction, we might end up capturing it after all! I'll ride ahead, and tell the rest of the corps to prepare the shackles we used for Sawney and Bean… we'll probably need both sets to keep it in place."

The eager scientist sped off, urging her horse to a full gallop. Jean couldn't help staring behind at the mass of Titans peeking out from within the trees.

And, in front of them, the huge form of the Gentle Titan, reveling in the night, just walking, digging its toes into the grass, the steam gently puffing out of its cheeks.

_Was this what you wanted, Marco? Just the chance to be free, to walk where you wanted, without fear or hindrance?_ Jean's lips tightened as he stared at the ground. _If that's true, then I'm sorry, because you aren't going to free for very much longer._

* * *

**End Note: I fully encourage theorizing! I like to do it on other people's stories; I think it's really fun. So if you've read this story and you have some crazy guess about how this story is going to play out, dump all your theories on me! I will give vague encouragement to all of them and make you feel like you've gotten something right. I know I've given enough information for a picture to start developing, but I also know that I've omitted enough that readers should still be in the dark on many things.**

ALSO! Special offer, as a reward to all'a you peeps who stuck with this story thus far. If anyone has a fic that they would like me to read and review I WILL DO THAT! Yes, that's right, free reviews are up for grabs right here *points to self*. I will give constructive criticism if you want or I will just tell you what I think you did well. I just really like having dialogues with other writers on here. So yeah! I'm going to be doing that for a little bit if anyone wants me to.

**Peace out everyone, and see you next chapter!**


	6. By the Firelight

**Author's Note: If any of you are wondering why this chapter isn't "Part 2" since the last chapter was a "Part 1" - don't worry, the next chapter IS the Part 2. And anyway, those chapter titles are more or less symbolic, so this isn't even like a filler chapter. But it does have a little bit more Jean/Marco interaction in it, so... hooray for that!**

* * *

_I keep telling myself that I'm dreaming, that none of this is real, and I think that's the only thing that gets me through it all. I am pinned; there's iron around my neck and my hands are literally stapled to the dirt with dozens of fat spikes, and it doesn't really hurt so much as it feels very wrong. It's like medieval torture; I'm in the stocks, just waiting for someone to start throwing rotten cabbages at me. What did I do wrong?_

_ But I don't struggle. It doesn't even cross my mind to try. The people imprisoning me – I don't think of them as my enemy. I get the sense, instead, that they're doing this for my own good, even though that makes me_ _feel like _I'm _the bad one, that I've done something to warrant this… The pain of that notion is as much a shackle as the chains and staples… but like a child, I trust them._

_ Right then and there, I decide that, from now on, I'm going to stop trying to go to my world of castles and knights. It isn't a nice place anymore. _

* * *

They had all gathered at the site of their victory, staring in wonder at the captured Titan. It was bound as securely as possible, but it was difficult to tell whether it truly could not break away. It drooped on the ground, staring without seeing.

"I still don't see why we had to pin him down like that," murmured Connie. "He wasn't hurting anyone, was he?"

Jean sat heavily down, his blades rattling in their box. "Precaution, I guess," he said to the ground. "But I wish they didn't have to do it, either."

He heard footsteps; soft deliberate crunching from behind him. The others were all hastily standing, clapping their fists to their hearts. Belatedly, Jean realized who had finally arrived at the scene, and he scrambled to his feet.

"So…" Commander Erwin Smith ignored the soldiers, marching straight up to the Titan with his hands clasped behind his back. "_This_ is the Aberrant we risked our best soldiers for."

Jean wasn't sure if Erwin's tone was out of admiration or disapproval. He held his salute and wondered if he should speak up, or let one of the superiors explain just what they had found.

Erwin hardly seemed bothered as he drew nearer to the bound Titan. He seemed to sense its docility. "And it is not a Shifter, but simply a deviant? Or is there a human within it, but he or she is merely unconscious? What do you make of it, Hanji?"

The auburn-haired scientist stepped forwards, wiping a thick sheen of sweat off her brow. "Well, it's an amazing story, Commander, but I believe… that this Titan may be some kind of intermediate between the two!" She took a deep breath and then tugged at her shirt collar, which was clinging to the raw skin around her neck. "According to the other soldiers, this Titan resembles a trainee who died at the Battle of Trost!"

Instead of reacting to this, Erwin crossed his arms and leaned forwards, staring at Hanji's throat, the skin of which had turned a mottled mixture of bruise-purple and burn-pink. "That's a strange injury, Squad Leader," he said cautiously. "How did you come by it?"

"A half-formed Titan tried to choke her because she was poking its birth sac," Levi said curtly, and he grabbed Hanji's wrist and tried to tug her away. "Which is why she really ought to be looked after by the medics, instead of hanging around here wasting her time."

In a rare moment, Erwin looked severely nonplussed. "… run that by me one more time," he said eventually.

Hanji impatiently shook Levi off and wiped her glasses, which had grown slightly foggy, making them glisten in the firelight. "The Gentle Titan was the _second_ thing we found out there! There was something else, and we didn't even go looking for it!" She wrung her hands and steadied her breaths, which were giving off slight puffs of condensation in the chilled air. "We'll have to do more experiments, but I think we've discovered why Titans eat humans!"

All the soldiers who were nearby and caught this exclamation halted in whatever they were doing. Some were carrying supplies, which spilled out of their grip. The pyres blazed and popped as the fire-minders let whole armfuls of kindling tumble into the flames.

"Wh-what?" hissed Connie. "We _did?_ When did we find that out—yowch!"

Sasha had stepped on his foot.

A flicker of interest passed through the commander's eyes, and then Erwin clapped a hand on Hanji's shoulder. "Perhaps it would be best if you heeded Captain Levi's wishes and headed to the infirmary," he said, with a meaningful look. "I'll be sure to check on you there."

Hanji seemed to receive the tacit message from Commander Erwin, whatever it was. She seemed a little less confident than usual, but that could have simply been because she was drenched in sweat. Jean realized that was a little peculiar – unless she had been lugging around the shackles that were currently around the Gentle Titan's neck, setting up the restraints without waiting for the others to help. It seemed like her to want to do all that on her own, he reassured himself.

"What's going on?" Eren whispered. "Why doesn't the commander want to hear everything right away? Isn't this all incredibly important?"

Mikasa had a very appraising expression. "Politics," she whispered back.

_ That's probably true, _thought Jean, who had overheard. _Once all this information gets out, he's going to have a hell of a time keeping it from the Military Police and the monarchy, and I'll bet he doesn't want them to know right away about the existence of a strange Titan. But then, is it right for him to keep this intel from them? The branches of the military shouldn't be mistrusting each other so much. And yet they do._

He moved closer to the Gentle Titan once the officers had left, and knelt in front of it. "I'm sorry," he said to the giant numbly. "I wish… I just wish I knew for sure that you were really in there. For a second there, out in the woods, I thought you could hear me…"

Jean moved closer to the nearest fire pit, filled by a strange sense of reminiscence. The last time he'd felt like this was the night that the Trost victims had been burned… and Marco had been one of them, hadn't he, his bones scattered among the others, unable to be discerned?

Unless… unless his body hadn't been burned at all.

* * *

I'm sitting up in bed and perusing a book off my eReader when Jean Kirschtein comes in. For the last few days, he's made regular visits, sometimes to check up on how my right half is doing, and other times to ask me a whole set of questions about things I can't really remember, like my life before the accident, and what exactly happened to me. He says it's all data for his dissertation, but it feels like he's just making excuses to come see me. At least, I hope so. That would be nice.

Today he's carrying a tray full of packaged things like applesauce, pudding, thick soups, watery soups, all kinds of foods that are simple to digest. I'm overjoyed; I'm sure the grin on my face is absolutely radiant. I've been waiting for this moment all week.

Jean, of course, is very grouchy about this whole deal. "Morning, Marco," he tells me, with a strained, forced smile. He drops the tray on my lap. "Guess what? You get to have some real food today! Isn't that great!"

I lay out the utensils, trying to arrange them so that I can reach them all with my one functioning hand. "I'm sorry about this," I tell him. "They always use the interns as servants around here… I know it's not what you wanted to be doing, bringing me food and things. Is this all from the cafeteria?"

"Y-yeah," Jean mumbles, taking a seat in the chair next to my bedside and crossing his legs and arms, a picture of discontent. "I bought it with my own money, so you'd better eat it all up, okay?"

"I'll pay you back!" I say instantly. "Or at least I'll get the hospital to give you a refund. You shouldn't have to spend money on me."

"It's all right, jeez!" He spreads his palms out towards me in a placating gesture, taken aback by my earnest words. "You don't have to do that, man, I'm the one who volunteered to be here." He leans an elbow on the armrest and scratches his hair, looking a little guilty. "Sorry, Marco. I shouldn't be so bitter about this… I just expected to be doing more of the actual science and instead…"

"Instead you're babysitting a cripple," I say sympathetically.

"No!" he bursts out, a little ashamed to hear it put that way. "I mean, yes. But really, it's what I wanted anyway. As long as I'm close to you, I don't mind." Then he seems to realize what he's just said, and what it sounds like, and his cheeks turn pink with embarrassment. "I mean, since I'm here to study you," he clarifies hastily. To emphasize his point, he pulls a small notepad out from the pocket of his white lab coat and clicks a pen on the bedside table. "I mean, to study your recovery."

"I'm flattered," I say teasingly, just to get him to blush again. I'm glad that there's more to Jean than just prickly ego, because it means I was right about him. "But doesn't this count as a selfless act?"

"Ha! No way!" Jean waves the notebook in my face. "In your dreams, Freckle-Face. I need to see how your digestive system reacts to all this."

"All right," I tell him, with a merry wink. "But thanks all the same." I pick out a pudding and trying to open it with one hand. I don't want to spill it, but since it's pretty tricky peeling the top off without a hand to steady the cup, I end up using my teeth.

"So, uh… how's your arm doing?" Jean asks me, ready to take notes. "You used it once before, didn't you?"

"I dnno owididdit," I say, with the cover of the pudding cup clamped between my lips. "Jus' 'appen'd." I pick up my spoon. "I don't really think I can eat _all_ of these. Have you had lunch yet? Do you want to share?"

Jean throws aside his notepad and eagerly selects an applesauce. "I figured you'd be starving, though. Your metabolism has to go into overdrive to generate all that tissue, right?" He peels the container open and tilts the cup into his mouth, not even bothering with utensils. "Thanks a ton, Marco," he tells me, wiping a bit of sauce from the corner of his mouth. "I can barely afford food these days, even splitting the rent with my roommates. University's a tough life, especially going in early like I did."

Official observation number two about Jean Kirschtein: He says he's too short on cash to buy his own supplies, but buys twenty marks' worth of café food for me, just in case I'm especially hungry. A cynic might think he's lying, fishing for sympathy, but I think all of that was true. I'm a good judge of people, and people sometimes can surprise you.

Offhand, I think it's funny that he's here to take notes on me, but here I am taking mental notes on him.

"Oh, drat," I murmur. Even with all my care, I've accidentally slopped a spoonful of pudding onto my blue-and-white striped hospital pajamas. That stain won't come out, I think sadly. I was trying to be careful, but I'm stuck using my non-dominant hand, and I don't even have depth perception, so I really should have seen this coming.

I think Jean notices right when it happens, but he sits there, frozen with indecision, for a good ten seconds before he stands up and removes the tray from my lap, pulling a handful of napkins from it and bunching up the front of my pajama shirt. He's got one knee on my bed, and he's leaning over me, furiously, wordlessly swiping at the blob of pudding until it vanishes.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you don't have to do that," I keep saying to him, once I recover the ability to speak, but he doesn't listen. He's annoyed at having to clean up after me, I can tell, but there's a part of him, the part in control, that really wants to make a good impression and isn't sure how.

"I guess next time you can bring me something that comes with a straw," I say, helplessly caught between his elbows. "Right, Jean? A straw, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess," he mumbles. "There's… uh… you've got some… on your…" He reaches out with the napkin and wipes the corner of my mouth, and then retreats back into his chair.

I finish my lunch in pensive quiet, while my intern hastily scribbles notes about my wellbeing. He asks me whether I have any feeling in my arm, and he asks how well I've been sleeping (I shrug to that one; I've been taking medication so that I don't slip into those lucid states, because they've been quite frightening), and he writes down all the numbers that show up on the monitors next to my bed.

And then the urge just becomes too strong and I reach out and tug on his sleeve. "Jean?" I say hopefully.

It surprises him. "Hah? What is it now?"

I put on my most pleading, most endearing expression. "The doctors said I would be able to leave the room as soon as I started eating," I tell him, and clasp my hands together in supplication. "Please, please, _please_ can we go somewhere? I don't even know much of what the rest of Sina Wing looks like."

He sighs, his elbow on the bedside table with his cheek resting in his hands. "You mean you want me to wheel you around, just so you can sightsee? Jeez, Marco! I've got so much other stuff to do, and—"

I slink back into the comfort of my pillow. "It's okay," I mumble. "I guess I'll ask you when you've got less on your plate."

I've only got a few seconds to get cozy, resigning myself to life under the covers, when the sheets are thrown off me. I roll over, surprised, and see that Jean's standing, with his hands spread out in apology. "I'll do it, I'll do it!" he exclaims, with a placating smirk that was probably trying to be a smile. "It's fine! Don't listen to my bullshit, I'm just super stressed out right now. If the doctors say it's okay…" He rushes to the corner of the room and returns, dragging the wheelchair. "Y-you need me to help you or something?"

My grin might just split open my cheeks. "I'll try on my own," I say, not wanting to burden him further. I place my hand on the armrest of the chair, trying to stabilize myself. Jean holds the chair steady as I slide in.

When Jean wheels me out into the corridor, I feel like a new stage of my life has begun.

He takes me to the elevator, the inside of which seems to be metal braided into wicker. I explore this strange texture with the tips of my fingers. "All right, Marco," Jean says, watching me impatiently. "Where do you want to go first?"

I say, "I don't know," because the truth is, I don't even have a clue what the University of New Heidelberg's hospital complex contains. I've seen emergency fire exit maps and internalized them for lack of anything better to do, so I grasp for that rudimentary knowledge. "There's a library, isn't there?" I ask. "In the building across from Sina?"

"Paper books," Jean snorts. "Why would you need to look at that? Everything's digital." But he punches a button with his knuckle. "I guess you just want to go outside, right?"

"That too," I admit, as the elevator starts its descent and I feel my body lightening along with my spirits.

We rush down floor after floor. I hadn't realized how high my room was until now. It makes me feel like I've been even further removed from reality than I believed. Aloft in my tower, I was like a caged bird. And even with my broken wings of freedom, I'm leaving the nest. I lift my head up to look at Jean. "What is the rest of the building like—?"

But I get my answer soon enough.

The elevator slides to a halt, and when the doors swish open, I'm blinded for a moment, not from light, but by the fantastic complexity of the sight before me. I don't know where to look first, and so everything blurs together into a kaleidoscopic specter of wonder.

I'm in awe of the atrium; whoever decorated it must have spent hours staring at fountains and internalizing the way the jets leap and bounce and strain their fingers to the heavens, because the major architectural motif seems to be a skyward surge, the moment of flight frozen in time just before it is quashed by gravity. Everything, from the grand columns to the floral displays to the rippling edges on the trash cans, seems to be falling upwards.

"It's so incredible," I breath, as Jean takes me down a low ramp from the elevator bank.

"Yeah, if by incredible you mean gaudy and tasteless," he retorts. Trust Jean to have something bad to say about such splendor.

I'm astounded by the sound of the place, too. The busy chatter of the employees, in their crisp lab coats, and patients like myself… it all echoes. Periodically, soothing computerized voices relay information at various terminals, telling of schedule changes and research seminars in block alpha, don't forget to attend, and directing visitors to their family members' rooms.

We pass by panels elucidating the history of the facility, and I only catch glimpses of familiar images – the steel frame of the first buildings in New Heidelberg, officials exchanging firm handshakes and the symbolic keys to the city, posturing for the millions of cameras. With the world's population growing exponentially, the trend of planned, sponsored cities became global. Whole buildings were erected within weeks; it was like how circus tents would suddenly appear and then swell with bustle and activity faster than blinking. They said that I was found in the outer perimeter of New Heidelberg, where the final facilities were being built. My accident – whatever it was that tore off the whole right half of my torso and a chunk of my head – could have caused by the high-speed construction mechs. But no one is really too sure.

Jean fumbles around in his pockets as he pushes me towards the large glass doors. He's got a pretty grumpy expression, but I'm leaning forward, eager for my first breath of fresh air. "You'd better have your ID ready," he tells me. "You aren't getting anywhere without it."

I show him that I've hung it around my neck. The lamination sparkles in the light. "Not a problem," I grin. "I wouldn't lose this."

The guard holds us for a second, and we both smugly flash our IDs. I feel like I'm a real person again. Somewhere in the digital record-books, the name Marco Bodt is filling up a handful of bytes of memory space, and a link to that record is encoded in the metal hidden within the white plastic.

And then, the tall doors slide open. Jean leans down and whispers in my ear, "Don't get too excited." His breath tickles my skin, and for some reason, I'm blushing.

"Oh, come on, Jean, don't be a sourpuss." The first rays of undiluted sunshine pour down from the heavens and dance on my face as I tilt my head upwards. "It's a beautiful day, and I'm breathing real air for the first time… why shouldn't I be excited?" I inhale deeply, wondering what scents and flavors I'll taste in the wind.

A supply truck hums past, discharging a cloud of biofuel exhaust and leaving me hacking and coughing as the taste of carbon compounds lingers in my throat.

"Kinda what I meant there, Freckle-Face," Jean smirks, but he pats me on the back anyway. "The world isn't as beautiful as you think." He takes me down path to the crosswalk, and pokes the button that may or may not have any effect on how quickly the light changes. "Sometimes I wish I could lie around all day in my bed like you do, and never have to go out."

I laugh as we cross the wide street, with the massive cargo trucks looming over us on one side like a platoon of metal mastodons in the road. "You don't want to go through what I went through, trust me." I stare ahead of me, at the tall, proud façade of the Stohess library building. "But that's all behind me, anyway. Isn't it? Come on, let's go inside!" I can hardly wait to see what this place is like.

It astounds me, even though I was prepared for it. This building was designed in reminiscence of ancient architecture, though it's still so new that the corners on the cornices haven't had time to collect dust yet. Jean gets stopped by yet another guard, and it seems like this time, his ID won't be good enough. He extracts everything he can from his pockets while I interject with helpful murmurs of "There—you forgot to check that one—oh, and try your back pockets, too…" When Jean finally digs out a sheaf of papers and slaps them into the guard's chest, he's fuming. "Stupidrulesstupidcountrystupidborderhometown…" he grumbles, all in one breath. "Here! Everything's in order! I just want to take this guy to see some inked-up pulverized wood pulp, okay!?"

When we finally get through, I look up at Jean quizzically. He seems very disgruntled. "Why wasn't your ID good enough to get you through?" I ask.

"Because I'm from a Zone," he tells me, through his teeth. "Border of France and Germany. And because it's a Zone, no citizenship to either one, which really pisses me off. And they need to double, triple check me since I'm escorting _you_…"

Am I really that valuable? But no, I shouldn't be thinking about that. What's important is that my intern is from a Zone, one of the only two in Europe. "I had no idea," I murmur. "Is it as hellish as they say?"

"Not when I lived there," Jean says shortly, and I'm filled with remorse for my lack of tact. We're both old enough to have been alive before the Four-Hour War happened, but I can hardly recall those days, so I find it hard to think of the Zones as places that normal people once lived in.

"I think it's amazing, that you've been able to accomplish so much here, despite that," I tell Jean earnestly. "But you know what? You're in one of the top universities in the world, doing the most ground-breaking science. And I know you didn't make it there on charity. You don't deserve to be treated like a refugee."

He seems mollified. "Yeah, 'cause I'm _not_," he adds, making a determined fist. "I left there before any of that crap went down. I don't even have an accent, do I?"

"Not in the slightest," I reassure him. "If it wasn't for your first name, I would never have guessed you were from anywhere but here."

"Yeah, I thought about changing it," he grunts. "But then I thought, 'Why the heck should I? I _like_ my damn name.'"

I decide not to press him about the subject, since I'm sure it's sensitive for him. "Well, _I_ like your damn name, too," I say with a wink, trying to lift his mood. It works; he goes red and tugs me backwards up the service ramp, muttering about how much of a dork I am. I'm laughing gleefully as my wheelchair is manhandled; people always treat me so delicately, like I could shatter at the slightest touch, but Jean makes me feel like I'm not quite so fragile.

"Welcome to the biggest repository of pressed wood pulp in the country," he tells me as he leads me into the grand, cathedral-like hall. In fact, I think it might have been designed based on some of the old cathedrals that are now hidden away in the Zones. Such a strange contrast from the interior of Sina Wing, but I think there's a similarity between the two, regardless.

I'm not sure why I wanted to come here, except perhaps to finally get to touch some of the knowledge that I've been gathering through my mobile devices. Jean interrupts my musing, asking me where I'd like to go, but I haven't decided yet, so I wave him off.

"Jeez," he tells me, scratching his hair. "You brought me all the way here, but you don't even know where you want to go?"

I fling out my good arm at random. "That way!" I declare, hoping it will take us somewhere interesting.

* * *

The fires were nearly out. Jean didn't bother to add any fuel to them; it would be morning soon. He could hear the first of the birds beginning to peep to life in the trees.

Somehow or another, he'd become the unofficial watch-guard for the Gentle Titan. There were other soldiers stationed around the area, but they all kept a respectful (perhaps fearful) distance. They seemed to recognize that staying by the Titan was, to this young weary soldier, more of a need than a desire. Jean didn't feel as much tired as he was drained and his eyelids barely flickered the whole while. It was an emotional fatigue he thought he might be suffering from. He still didn't know if he had come to terms with all the implications that the appearance of the Gentle Titan brought.

The first few days after the bodies were recovered from the Battle of Trost had been absolutely hellish, but it almost seemed to have grown worse over time. Grief, after all, is a casket of wine that holds a new bouquet with each dam-bursting turn of its tap. At first, it sizzles on the tongue, luring you in with the honeyed promise of catharsis, and then transmuting to acrid vinegar once it reaches the back of your throat, so you think you might be choking on it, drowning in it, engulfed by the waves of its sheer humanity. And calling it wine was perhaps the best thing to compare to because Jean had often wondered – since it was months after his friend's corpse and he still had moments where felt like he was falling, toppling out of control from a great height – if it was possible to become permanently drunk off of grief.

The memory suddenly became quite lucid, perhaps almost like a waking dream – the night after he'd made his choice to join the Recon Corps.

Lying in his bed, with the moonlight creeping in through the windows, the rage had oozed out of his eyes and slid down his cheeks, and he'd tightened his stranglehold on his pillow. It wasn't because he was mourning, Jean had told himself. Other people, when this happened to them, they mourned – they carried candles to graves, they sat around reminiscing about the lost, they _cared,_ and they tried to heal their shredded hearts with the balm of healthy emotion.

But Jean Kirschtein didn't mourn. No, Jean Kirschtein had cowered in his room and sobbed into his pillow because he'd been scared. He had been scared that he was going to die, because everyone did at one point or another. Somewhere, somehow, whether he be hobbling and leathery, or young, with a heart so swelled with self it was ready to burst, Jean was going to end. He would cease to be. He feared this fact, but he had been even more terrified because somewhere deep down, he had thought that perhaps he _wanted _to.

Because seeing Death's scythe brush so close to himself, taking another life in its ceaseless swing … it was nerve-wracking, like fingernails screeching against the blackboard of the soul, and something about it made you _snap_. And it made you want to dive in front of the blade, just to end the terror on your own terms.

Jean had heard stories about soldiers whose eyes had always been misty and laden with sorrow and then one day, their spirits dried up inside and their lifelines broke and they flung themselves into the nearest Titan's mouth, willing as lambs, with dreamy smiles on their faces. Just like leaves in the autumn, Jean thought hazily as he remembered, they let go of that thin twig of sanity as winter loomed.

And, he had wondered, would that be him, one day?

He'd sprawled himself out across his bed, stared up at the bunk that was now and to him would always be, from now on, empty, and hadn't realized he was holding his breath until bright spots began dancing in front of his eyes.

The impulse to punch the pillow had come over him, and he found himself unable to disobey it. It wasn't like a thought – it was a reflex. But when the pillow proved to be too soft, too yielding, Jean had turned and decked the wall instead.

The pain had not been a blessed relief. It hadn't been a bracing jolt of clarity, either. It was murky, mucky, mind-stabbing agony. Jean had howled like a wounded child, clutching his bruised knuckles and whispering the foulest of curses in such a heartfelt, broken way that they sounded like a dying declaration of love.

A hand on his shoulder pulled him out of his reverie, and Jean returned to the present. He tilted his head up. "Armin?" he asked hoarsely.

"You've been awake all night," the blonde said quietly. "Maybe you ought to go get some rest. No one will think badly of you if you sleep late."

Jean stood up, brushed off the cooled charcoal dust on his pants. He glared down at the smoldering ash. "I need your help with something," he declared.

"If there's anything I can do," responded Armin, a little befuddled but speaking sincerely nonetheless, "you can count on me."

The sun came up like a blooming rose.

"I want you to help me find out what happened to Marco," Jean said.

* * *

**End Note: I wasn't actually kidding about that thing I said last chapter. If you have written a fanfic that you want me to read and review, I will do that. Like, legit. No jokes here. 100% true facts. I like having discussions with fellow creators. I. LIKE. IT. You don't even have to review this story to get me to read your stuff, just PM me. Come on guys, pile me up with stuff to read!**


	7. The Hole in the Wall, Part 2

**Author's Note: One thing of note: I went back and changed the term "Recon Corps" to "Survey Corps" because... I don't know. The whim struck me. I decided I wanted to use that translation. Anyway, that's that.**

**This chapter will have more worldbuilding and some plot advancement! But it will still be enjoyable, so... enjoy!**

* * *

As it turns out, the section of the library I chose is the world geography wing. I run my hands over the spines of the volumes, which feature such tantalizing titles as 'Journey into the Belly of Fire' and 'The Greatest Mysteries of Eras Past'. I reach out and snatch the fattest tome off the closest shelf I can reach.

I wasn't expecting to see a pair of giant blue eyes and a button nose through the hole from where the book had been. I start, and then wave through the shelf to the boy on the other aisle. "Hi there!" I say brightly, amused by this situation of meeting.

"Erm. Hello," the boy responds. He peers closer through the hole; then his eyes widen, and I think I've been recognized. "Oh! You must be…!" He dithers for a moment and then dashes off towards the end of his aisle.

"Marco, come on, you're talking to the books," Jean says, poking my good shoulder. "You dozing off there or something?"

I lean my head back and grin up at my intern, who raises a skeptical eyebrow. "I wasn't talking to the books," I say, "I made a friend. Look, here he comes now."

The boy whose eye I'd seen runs out from behind the end of the hallway. He might be my age, but he doesn't look it; he's got a youthful face to match his round cut of blond hair and tiny nose, but there's also a look of intense shrewdness in his eyes. I can sense it right away; this kid is a clever one.

He's clutching a large book to his chest. From behind this shield, he extends an eager hand. "My name's Armin!" he says hesitantly. "Armin Arlert. I… you're Marco Bodt, right? Marco the Miracle?"

"Is that what they're calling me?" I say in disbelief. "I guess my being alive kind of is a miracle." I try my best to shake with my left hand, but it ends up being complicated since the boy's extending his right, and we both fall into awkward giggles and apologies as a result.

Jean, sitting at one of the reading tables nearby, cuts right to the chase. "So how d'you know about this guy?" he asks, leaning his cheek on his hand. "I didn't think his picture was on public display. There's too many idiots out there who don't approve of the Titan Procedure."

The blond boy shakes his head. "No, no, I didn't recognize him by his face," he tells Jean. "My friend's father is one of the scientists heading the research project, and I've heard a lot about you, like how you grew back a whole half of your upper body and—" He points to my bandaged right side. "The pattern of your injuries exactly matched the image I'd pieced together in my mind!"

"And you got all that from just one glimpse of him?" asks Jean, a little impressed. Then his eyes narrow. "Wait a sec. You said your friend's old man works for the research project?"

Armin Arlert sits down across from Jean at the table and spreads his book out, but he's still looking at me, and I can tell he's thinking hard. I'm fascinating to him. "I'm sorry to show up so abruptly," he says timidly. "I'm sure you're too used to being the center of attention because of your medical properties."

"Yeah, rub it in," says Jean, snorting. "This guy is the hottest thing since the mobile device." He coughs. "Er. You know what I mean. But… about this friend of yours…"

A loud voice disrupts the tranquility of the library. "_A-Armin!?_" it calls plaintively. "Where did you go? I'm right over here!"

Jean looks like he just bit into a lemon. "I can't believe this," he says.

"I'm right over here, Eren!" says Armin, in as quiet a yell as he can muster. It comes out rather high and hoarse. "Just… follow my voice. And you're not supposed to shout in a library…"

A second boy rounds the corner of the aisle at a run. He's got messy brown hair and an expressive face easily scrunched into contusions of extreme emotion, though it's muted by the peace of the environment and his current state of mind. "Armin, I was just in the bathroom!" he complains. "If you vanish like that, how else was I going to find you, if not by shouting?"

"This is Eren," Armin tells us, laying a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Eren Jaeger."

There's some resemblance that I see to Grisha Jaeger, but in truth, he's the spitting image of his mother, Karla. "I've heard plenty about you and your sister—" I start to say, and then turn to Jean, because his expression is really confusing me.

He and Eren are glaring at each other, the same way that two neighbors glare who haven't decided on whether the branches of the tree from the first's yard overhanging the second's yard are within the second's jurisdiction to chop down, the same way that two tomcats glare with their wide glowing eyes in the dark of an alleyway.

"So," I say helplessly. "You two know each other?"

"Yeah," Jean mutters. "The guy's at Uni too. Thinks he's a real big shot, and he can't stop moralizing at me."

Eren marches right up to Jean, his teal eyes blazing. "So what did you do to get to the top of my dad's intern list for the RHIM project, huh?" he demands. "Pay off the secretary? I bet you saw this as your big chance to get a foot in the door at Titan Corp."

I'm about to protest that Jean got in on merit, but he smirks. "Jealous, Jaeger? Okay, I admit it. I wrangled things a bit so I'd be next in line for the gig. You can't win at life if you don't make your own rules sometimes." Then he pats my shoulder condescendingly. "Besides, this poor guy needed the best of the best to look after him. And since that happens to be me, I figure I was performing an act of charity."

I'm a little blown away by how quickly Jean has transformed. I mean, he's often blunt and abrasive but… this is pretty awful. Yet knowing what I do – that he comes from a Zone, that he's likely treated all the time as a drain on society, a hanger-on, a useless refugee – I can understand why he'd develop this cocky, self-centered persona. It's his way of shouting to the world that he isn't just another refugee living off the taxpayer, that he's as good as anyone else.

But still, I don't want to be caught in the middle of this. I'm torn between defending my friend and chiding him for his rudeness, but in the end, Armin steps in. "Eren, he's just trying to get your goat," the bookish blond murmurs, tugging a resisting Eren backwards. "Anyway, if you didn't yell at people, they wouldn't react like that so often."

"He probably doesn't even care about Marco!" Eren spits. "Marco's just a hunk of meat to him! Something to analyze and then throw away when it goes rotten!"

Jean stiffens and turns red, then purple. I momentarily consider faking a seizure, just to end this awful line of discussion. But, knowing that's a poor idea, I fumble in my head for something to say that could calm down both parties. They're like a couple of bulls at it in the fields, and getting between them could mean as much of a gory end, but I have to try.

Except Jean lets out a steadying breath before I can speak. "Think what you like," he says evenly, crossing one knee over the other. "But I'm telling you right now, that isn't true. And if you say it, or even _imply_ it out loud in front of my friend again, _I swear I'll break your jaw._"

Oddly enough, this mollifies Eren, who seems to respect it as a chivalrous expression of loyalty. "There shouldn't be any need for that," says the boy slowly. "I believe you." He extends his hand. "How about a truce?"

"Are they always like this?" I mouth to Armin, who bobs his head up and down vehemently as Jean and Eren apparently attempt to cut off circulation to each other's fingers. It seems that they are, indeed, always like this.

Jean stands up, and says something vague about wanting to go check out some textbooks for his classes, and then he stomps off. I find myself alone with the enemy. Tact and planning are a must in this situation, I think.

Eren disagrees. He grabs Armin's book off the table and holds it open to me. "Hey, Marco," he exclaims eagerly, as if the fight over me had never taken place. "Don't you think you'd want to go to a place like this someday?"

The book contains a full page image that shows a craggy peak, windswept and barren, wreathed by an aurora borealis. "Well, I might prefer to just look at it," I say. "The picture can't exactly give you frostbite. But if you want to go, I think that could be fun."

"That's what I keep on telling Armin!" Eren says. "It would be incredible. Our Earth Science course could take us there, to this very place, to study Icelandic volcanology, but I need Armin to come along too, otherwise our group will be too small and they won't give us the money." He turns to his friend. "Besides, I thought you wanted to go!"

"I told you before, Eren," Armin says uncomfortably. "I don't know if I can afford to leave my other studies for a whole semester…"

I kindly interject. "Do either of you know where I could find books on… uh… sleep?" I ask them. "Dream psychology, that sort of thing." Because I've been pretty curious to analyze the bizarre lucid dreams used to keep having. I'm hesitant about going to see this Dot Pixis that Hanji recommended to me… Perhaps I can do a little independent research for myself. This probably isn't the most common action people take in a situation like this, but when you spend all your days around scientists, research becomes the automatic answer to whenever you don't know something. The idea of just accepting your ignorance is unheard of.

Armin pulls out a smartphone and unfolds it, waving through the holo-projection desktop and opening up an application that seems to be a virtual map of the library. Then he points me in the right direction. "Would you like me to take you there?" he offers.

I take of the casing on my left armrest and show him the controls. "The wheelchair's mechanized," I tell him, grinning. "Jean probably has no idea. Either that, or he likes pushing me around." And so, with my a location in mind, I hum off.

Jean was right about one thing – people really don't care much for paper books anymore. Even though the shelves are packed, there's scarcely anyone around to read them. And whereas façade of the building is spick-and-span, perfectly sculpted to the outside viewer, the interior seems strangely run down. The fluorescent lights flicker and strobe in the corners, as if no one bothers to fix them, and, the deeper I go into the archives, the more like a warehouse it becomes. It's not a place where books are offered to the public; it's a facility where they're hidden away.

I find the aisle that I'm looking for; there's no particular reason why I should need to find paper books on dreams and sleep in a library, since there's hardly any information that can't be found online, but I feel obliged to make use of the place, while I'm here. The poor building hardly gets any traffic.

Strangely enough, I'm not entirely alone in this hall, though I haven't seen a soul in any other section nearby. At the end of the rows of shelves, a young woman is holding open a book to the back cover. She's got the little card out of its pocket, the one with the stamps from all the people who've taken the book out previously, and she's staring at it intently.

As I direct my wheelchair down the aisle, the girl's eyes dart upwards and to the side, to where I'm sitting. They're an icy blue, hidden by a fringe of blonde hair that's bundled into a bun in the back. She's also got quite a large nose, and the only reason why I pay any attention to this is that it strikes a peculiar chord with me, almost as if all those separate features add up to a familiar face. For some reason, the same queasiness settles in my stomach as when I'm reminded of something to do with my accident. It must be something about this empty hall, or a prevalent smell; it would be silly to think that the girl had anything to do with it.

She stuffs the card back into the pocket, snaps the book shut, and shoves it back into the highest shelf she can reach on her tiptoes. Her expression is absolutely chilling as she passes by; I'd wonder if she was just having a bad day, but it's not irritation that's really prevalent. It is pure, undiluted intensity.

I wait, until I'm sure she's gone, and then I drive myself to where she'd put the book away. I'd caught a glimpse of the title, and it looked just like the sort of thing I'd be looking for. Funny how things can work out like that, right? Unfortunately she's put it up a little too high for me to reach from my chair; not intentionally, I'm sure, but since she left so quickly, I didn't have time to ask her to leave it lower down.

Still, it's not like I'm fully crippled from the waist down. If I was only standing for a moment, I'm pretty sure I'd be all right. Right? I slide forward and steady my stance on the footrest on the , then carefully push myself upwards.

It makes me a little dizzy, and a spot just behind my good eye starts to throb a bit, but standing like this, the book is below shoulder height. I spend most of my time lying down or in wheelchairs, but I know from my official measurements that I'm actually moderately tall. I've got my hand closed around the book and am just pulling from the shelf when—

"_Marco!_" It's an exasperated yell, but tinged a little with worry. I see Jean standing at the end of the aisle, with Eren and Armin flanking him. I'm able to get the book out before Jean charges down the corridor and pulls me back into my seat. He puts one shoe on the footrest and leans over the wheelchair. I shrink down into the chair with a guilty expression as my intern looms above me. "What is _wrong_ with you, Marco?" Jean complains. "You want to have another seizure? Didn't the doctors tell you not to try standing up, you moron?"

"I just wanted to fetch a book," I try to explain. "I wasn't going to be walking around or anything—"

"I don't want to hear it!" Jean grabs the front of my shirt. "Last time you decided to wander off and try some dumb stunt on your own, you nearly died!"

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Eren and Armin's presence for a second time, and I lay a my good hand on Jean's shoulder. "It's all right," I say gently. "Jean, I know you don't think of me as just another test subject. You don't need to prove that to me. Or them."

He falters, then blusters a bit. "Th-that's not the point!" he exclaims. "I'm not trying to prove anything to… to anyone! I'm just saying you should be more careful!" But, as I'd expected, my words throw him off. "J-just don't try any dumb shit like that again, okay?"

As Jean gets behind the chair and wheels me back out of the corridor, I inspect the cover of the book in my hands. _Strange Shores: Understanding the Lucid Dream State and the Collective Unconscious (A Modern Perspective)_. What an odd coincidence that just the sort of book I'd be looking for would be the one that someone else had been so intently fascinated with.

Except the girl hadn't been fascinated with the book; she'd been looking at the stamped card in the back. I'm struck with a bit of curiosity, and since it's not any trouble for me to turn to the end and pull the card out of its tiny envelope, I do.

Only one person's ever checked out this book according to the card, and it was recent; returned just today. And furthermore, (strangely) they had no I.D. number to stamp, so the borrower's name is handwritten in (who handwrites anymore?), penned in a very practiced, deliberate hand. _Marlo Freudenberg._

I get the sense that the name's familiar; it's ringing a bell, but nothing specific comes to mind. I wonder why the young woman had been so interested to know that this Mr. Freudenberg had taken out a book.

"Why _did_ you want to go off like this, anyway?" Jean is complaining as we make our way back to the main reading area.

"Why else?" I say. "I was looking for a book."

Jean snorts, but keeps his disdain unspoken this time. Armin, though seems to understand my actions perfectly, perhaps even better than I do myself. He certainly carries all books around as if they were softly sleeping newborns, and knows his way around this place. It is apparent that this is his element.

Eren peeks over at the book in my hands. "Dreams, huh? You're a psych major?"

I shake my head with a smile. "I _am_ pretty interested in psychology, but I'm not actually enrolled in any university." And come to think of it, I don't even know how I would begin to apply; I don't have any personal information except my name. They tried to find out who I was when they discovered my body, but, strangely, nothing had come up. I was an anonymous victim of an accident, and so I suppose the perfect test subject. "This is for some personal research."

"What sort of personal research?" Armin asks. "Have you been having strange dreams recently?"

"Yeah! Yeah," I tell him. "I think it's because of all the restructuring that my brain has been doing over here." I point to the bandaged right side of my face. "And it even showed up in this weird hallucination I had."

Eren is struck by morbid curiosity. "What happened in the hallucination?"

I tell them about the screaming girl, and the hole in the wall. "But Doctor Zoe took a picture of the hallway, there was a painting where the hole should have been. And I know that painting was there beforehand, I remembered it. So," I say logically, "if that painting had been there, it would have gotten destroyed."

Instantly Jean starts cackling with unrestrained mirth. I twist around and stare up at him; he's so overcome by hysterics that he's hanging onto the back of the wheelchair for support. "My _god_, Marco!" he gets out. "Can you be _any_ more naïve?" I'm pretty confused by this, as you might expect, but Jean elaborates once he catches his breath. "So, in all this time, the idea never even crossed your mind that maybe they _moved the painting to cover the hole?_"

This makes me feel rather the fool. "Wow," I mumble. "I… didn't even consider that. I guess I just wanted to put the whole thing behind me."

"If you did want to put it all behind you," says Armin, "then why did you want to take out a book on the subject?"

He really is too clever to miss anything. "I guess it was still bothering me, in the back of my mind," I admit. "It really felt… real, and I don't want to go through life not knowing what's real or true."

Eren's eyes are flashing. "But then… this means all of what you saw really could have happened! And they're trying to cover it up!" He clenches his fists. "I always knew there was something up at that stupid place that Dad doesn't talk about!"

I get the same wave of feeling off of Eren as when he was butting heads with Jean, except it's not directed at any particular person. The whole research institute seems to be the rival in this case, competing for his father's love and attention, and perhaps his mother's as well, since she works there too. It's as if he holds a grudge on the place for depriving him of his family.

Maybe I _should_ study psychology, after all.

Eren grabs hold of my wheelchair. "Come on!" he insists. "We've got to go see if that hole is still there!"

Instantly, Jean smacks Eren's hands away from my chair and then elbows him in the stomach for good measure. "Hey!" he barks. "Marco's _my_ charge!"

"Don't fight!" I instantly exclaim, because it looks like they're about to do just that. In an effort to quell the rising antagonism, I say soothingly, "I'm all right to go back and have a look at the wall, Jean."

"Sure, fine, whatever," Jean says, with a sweep of his hand. "I mean, I honestly don't give a crap if Titan Corp really is hiding anything, as long as I get my cushy job. So this better not get me fired."

Eren glares daggers – no, diamonds – no, _lasers_. It's such a cutting, intense stare that it reminds me of the strange blonde I'd seen in the hallway. But it's quite as precise or as focused as hers. It just has a world of furious emotion behind it. Then he calms himself down. "If you think that's more important than finding the truth, then so be it," he says. "But I'm not going to be just another sheep content to be fat in the pasture. Come _on_, Armin, Marco."

"Did he just call me _fat?_" says Jean, as he's swept along with the rest of us.

"Metaphorically, I think," I say, and pat his hand. "I wouldn't take it to heart."

* * *

He might have slept through an entire day and night's worth of activity, but Jean Kirschtein was the first one up the next morning, and he didn't waste a moment getting ready. Forgoing basic hygiene and even shaving, he hurried outside while the morning air was still crisp and fresh.

The giant shape was still there. So he hadn't dreamed it up, he thought. It's really real… He's really _here_.

A handful of guards were standing at their posts around the Gentle Titan. Jean ignored them and they, perhaps having been told of the delicate situation, in turn ignored him as he approached the living statue, a colossus of his friend. "Hey, buddy," he said.

The Titan's face was lifted up to the sky, and a faraway, wistful expression graced its familiar features. Perhaps it had been watching the cosmos wheel through the heavens through the night, in rapt wonder. Perhaps it had its sights fixed on something further beyond that that. It had a light smile just tilting up on the corners of its cheeks; even though Jean wasn't sure how much of Marco really was in this Titan, that was good to see. But it made the face that the smile wasn't directed at _him_, at Jean, even more painful.

"Don't you feel that he might start speaking at any moment?"

Jean turned around, and saw Hanji Zoe approaching him from behind. She seemed a little out of breath, like she'd jogged her way here. Jean noted this, but then promptly forgot about it. "I don't really get that from him," he said brusquely. "Seems like any old dumb Titan to me."

It had come out harsher than he'd meant it to. The scientist patted his shoulder. "You ought to head on over to HQ," she told him. "You're the one who knew Marco best, and you're the one who tamed him. Figures that they'd want to talk to you."

"I didn't _tame_ him," Jean told her, irritated. "He calmed himself down on his own; I swear I didn't do anything. And he certainly doesn't respond to me when I try to talk to him," he added bitterly, "so it's not as though I'm the Titan Whisperer or some stupid shit like that—" He realized his throat had gotten a bit clogged, and berated himself for letting himself go like that, especially in front of the squad leader. "Forget what I said," he murmured, and swiftly saluted. "I'll just… be in a meeting, I suppose. With all sorts of other head honchos. He's all yours."

As soon as Jean was out of sight, Hanji tugged at her collar a bit, letting out a breath of relief as cool air washed over her neck. The bandages felt sticky and heavy as usual, and far too hot. "My," she said as she caught her breath and wiped sweat off her brow, staring up at the Gentle Titan. "You really have created more questions than you've answered, haven't you, Marco Bodt?"

* * *

The moment of truth has arrived. We're all gathered around the minimalist depiction of the Berlin Wall. Jean seems unbelievably bored with all this, and he's leaning against the wall, yawning to show just how much disdain he has for this entire venture. Armin and Eren, on the other hand, are as eager as can be.

I'm not sure how I feel. On the one hand, I need some sense of closure. If I don't find out whether there's been some kind of cover-up (in the literal sense, no less!), I'm sure it'll gnaw at me. But then again, if it does turn out that I didn't dream up the hole in the wall, then that means I probably didn't imagine the girl's voice… This might be a case where I'd be happier not knowing.

Yet just because I feel that way, it doesn't mean that I'll wimp out.

"Okay," says Armin, glancing from side to side. "I think the coast's clear."

Eren grabs the corners of the painting, and then quickly lifts it from the hook on the wall it's hanging on. He tilts it slightly so that the others can get a good look at the space beyond, then, unsatisfied with being unable to see, he drops it to the floor.

Again, I'm not sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed. The stretch of wall is whole and undamaged, just like the rest of the wall around it. "Smooth as a baby's butt," says Jean. "You guys satisfied now?"

"No! That… that can't be all! Argh! I was so close!" Eren grits his teeth, and then, to my horror, he pulls his fist back and punches the plaster.

Armin watches helplessly as the boy pounds his knuckles against the blank wall. "Eren… don't hurt yourself…!"

It's Jean who finally intervenes. He grabs Eren by the shirt collar and drags him away from the wall. "Get a _grip!_" Jean snaps. "How are you seriously freaking out over something as pointless as this? So it turns out Marco imagined everything up! Why do you mind so much?"

"They must have plastered it over!" explodes Eren. "I'm trying to see if this spot on the wall is any weaker than the rest of it—Armin, what are you doing!?"

Armin firmly hangs the painting back against the wall. "You have to let this go, Eren," he says. "You're acting like a crazy person… a-and it's kind of scaring me a little."

In Jean's grip, Eren sags. His eyes take on a dull, lusterless kind of despair. I wonder just how much he's been through to be this intense about everything – and then it hits me. There's only one sort of person who looks at the world with that much fear and paranoia. "Eren?" I ask softly. "May I ask a very… personal question?"

"Depends on what it is," Eren shoots back, a little bit of his flame flaring up once again, but then it sinks down again. "Fine… I guess I owe you that much, just from wasting your time like this."

"Do you and Armin… come from…?"

I don't even have to finish. He knows what I'm going to ask, and doesn't bother hiding the truth because he knows that I already know the answer. "Yeah," mumbles Eren. "A Zone. Same one as this guy over here," he jabs a thumb behind him, "but not as close to the border. And unlike _him_, we were actually living there when the Four Hour War went down."

He stares at the floor. "I don't have to live in the projects like the rest of the refugees since my dad's got favor from the government, what with working on the Titan Project and everything but…" He can't keep it in any longer. "B-but I hate that fact! I don't want to be treated differently from Armin and get to go to Icelandic volcanoes that he'll never see because the University won't give him any breaks! I hate Titan Corp for letting me off the hook while Armin still gets treated like shit!"

I wish I had some comforting words to say, but it's not really my place to apologize to Eren for being born where he was, and it wasn't as though I was the one who'd pressed the button that send out the barrage of nuclear warheads to random spots all around the map.

They still hadn't caught the man who had – if he even was a man. It could have been a man, a woman, a rogue AI system imitating the style of political extremists, or a multinational conspiracy. All that was known was that a frighteningly unreasonable ransom note for the entire world had been delivered one day, speaking about the initiation of the Apocalypse and the rightful dominion of beings made in God's image over all the earth.

No one knew what to do, right up to the point where the bombs started falling.

The Beast, they called him. Or her. Or it. Again, no one knew. But one thing was sure about the Beast – whoever they were, they were every country's most wanted criminal.

"Let's get going, Marco," Jean grunts. He drops Eren, grabs the end of my wheelchair, and starts to tug me away, but I don't want to leave it at that. I punch a button on my armrest and spin my chair around to face Eren and Armin again, who are standing there looking like they're expecting to be whipped.

"I want to meet up again," I tell them desperately. "I want to hang out sometime again."

Armin's eyes widen. "R-really?" he squeaks. Then he regains his composure. "Yes! Yes, I'd like that too. And so would Eren, right Eren?" Wordlessly, Eren nods.

"Time for you to get back to bed, bud," Jean says loudly. "You've had quite enough excitement for the day." He places his hands on my shoulders just the tiniest bit possessively. "Besides, I think your daily soak under the big lamps is coming up soon. Got to get you all prepped up for that, right?"

I wave goodbye to the two boys as Jean pulls me back to my room. I'm glad to have met them. The more I get to know about the world, the more real all these things like the Four-Hour War seem to me. It's not some distant bit of history anymore; it's something that's affected friends of mine. So it doesn't matter, then, that the hole in the wall turned out to be fake, because I gained something far more important.

It's only when I'm just starting to get drowsy from the anesthetics that I realize something that seems like an offhand thought at first. I wasn't the only one witness to that hole in the wall that wasn't there… Jean had been in the hall too, trying to calm my seizure down. But then, he'd have _known_ that there was no hole in the wall, right? He could have just told the others that there hadn't been anything, rather than let them make fools of themselves.

Silly Jean, I think. Trust him to forget that he already _knew_ the wall was undamaged.

* * *

_Stohess District; the Interior of Wall Sina._

"Still hung up over that crazy chick, huh, Marlo?" Hitch prodded the squad leader in the small of his back. "You're daydreaming again. Budge up; we'll miss all the good bits off the table if we're late for dinner."

Marlo Freudenberg clenched his teeth and tried to curb the roiling tide of anger that was currently swelling in his throat, directing itself at the wheat-blonde young woman. Hitch was always like this, thinking only of herself, concerned with nothing but the easy life that being a member of the Military Police brought. But then, everyone joined the Military Police for the same reason. Marlo had tried to convince himself that he was there for some kind of cause, that he was pure of heart and intention, but he suspected that had been a lie. A lie he told himself to excuse the fact that he was a coward. And that made him the worst kind of scum, didn't it?

"Go on without me," he told Hitch. "I'm not hungry."

Relieved, the rest of the squad trotted off. "We'll save you something!" called another girl generously. "In case you change your mind."

Marlo just shook his head and placed his hands on the railing of the bridge. Wind funneled up the sleeves of his jacket, and he could taste the now ever-present ash in the air.

Stohess was still wounded, torn apart by the fight between the two Titans.

The only person, he thought, who seemed to be in the Military Police for a reason that was not shallow or selfish… had caused all this. Widespread destruction, civilian and military causalities, the cruelest of crimes. It made Marlo's blood boil. He'd been completely taken in. He'd honestly believed that Annie Leonhart was an honorable person.

Hitch was right. He _was _still hung up over "that crazy chick". She'd completely shattered his worldview once, made him doubt his greatest certainties and yet believe in them ever more strongly, and then she'd gone and shattered them all again by turning out to be a monster, a killer. Marlo rather thought he hated her. It felt like the world was swaying beneath his feet, making him seasick, and stuffing his face with the rich fare that the policemen were given was the last thing he needed right now, in his opinion.

Instead, he faced out across the canal, towards the ashes, wiping a slick patch of sweat from his brow. Was he coming down with a fever?

Not too far across the way was the wall, the very spot where Annie had inadvertently torn the bricking away and revealed something that Marlo and the other soldiers had been forbidden to speak of to anyone else. They'd all seen it.

The hole in the wall, and the Titan's face grinning from within.

As if in a dream, as if a voice was calling his name, Marlo began to walk towards Sina.


	8. A Small White Card

**Author's Note: Sorry about the long interval between updates! As a reward for patience, this chapter is longer than usual. Lots of stuff going on in this one. Enjoy!**

* * *

It was a subject of common consensus among the members of the Survey Corps that Jean Kirschtein was slowly losing his marbles. They whispered about it in the halls after the wide-eyed, unshaven, disheveled youth had passed, eternity swimming in the amber dots of his eyes. He had become inattentive, lackluster, and highly irritable. Everyone knew that just one thing occupied his mind.

For example, whenever he performed group formations and joint maneuvers, Jean perceived a ghostly sense of imbalance. He'd always, always formed up with Marco in their trainee days; he was used to Marco's weight as counterbalance, used to Marco's quirks of movement and strengths and weaknesses. Marco was the only person that Jean had ever been able to work as a team with.

Though, perhaps it was just more noticeable when the substitute was Eren.

"Take the _left!_" Jean kept bawling as they zipped through the trees. "I told you already, _I'm_ on the right! Shove outta my space, Jaeger!"

"I wouldn't have to get in your space," Eren snarled back, "if you didn't keep dozing off and drifting out of formation!"

Puffed up with indignation, Jean prepared himself to retort that he wasn't dozing off, jackass, he was just moving so he wouldn't crash into Eren, who kept on straying from his spot to 'cover' for Jean, but those words were all left stillborn since Jean ran headlong into a tree.

Lights popped in his vision as he slid down the trunk. A moment later, he felt a pair of arms around his waist, stopping his fall, and then Eren flew them to the nearest large branch. Jean sprawled out on the limb, licking blood from his lips. "Shit," he said, ineloquently. "That hurt."

"What is the _matter_ with you!?" Eren exploded. "When was the last time you wiped out that badly? Two years ago? Two and a half? You're better than that!"

"Don't you start on me!" Jean said thickly, through the blood in his nose and mouth. "You practically pushed me into that—"

"I didn't _push _you! You flew right into it—!"

The hiss and purr of approaching maneuver gear alerted the two of them to a third presence rapidly approaching. Jean turned his bloodied face to the new arrival and felt his wobbling scoop of self-esteem topple over and splat on the ground.

"Fighting again?" said Mikasa, with a hint of scornful disapproval. "How either of you expect to survive our next mission like this is beyond me." She marched along the branch with characteristic grace and began to inspect Eren's face, turning his chin this way and that. "Are you hurt?" she asked.

"Is _he_ hurt!?" Jean squawked. He got to his feet and disgustedly wiped the blood off this face with the hem of his cloak. "Wait… you think I got this from _him?_" The injustice of it… Jean _seethed_. Not only had Mikasa thought that he and Eren had been exchanging blows, but she was more concerned with Eren's nonexistent injuries than Jean's obvious spilt lip. There went any hope, he thought, of ever coming out on top, even when seen in the most sympathetic light.

"We weren't fighting!" Eren quickly assured Mikasa. "Jean just flew into a tree; that's why we couldn't complete the maneuver with you."

Looking like a maladroit buffoon didn't really help Jean's case much, either. "Let's just go back and try the move again," he said, clenching his jaw and trying not to look too injured. "So maybe I'm not perfect. Everyone makes a few mistakes."

"When you're in battle," said Mikasa, not looking once at Jean, "you can only make a mistake once."

Sinking back down into a crouch, Jean grumbled, "Fine! Fine! If you want to get all touchy-feely about this and work out what's wrong with me, go right ahead. God forbid you should mind your own business."

"I don't think there's much to work out, Jean," said Eren, a little bit apologetically. "We all know what's bothering you, but I don't really understand why it's affecting your performance. Shouldn't the chance that Marco will come back be motivating for you?"

Jean rolled his eyes up as he adjusted his gear straps, which had been tugged out of place after being manhandled by Eren. "Idiot… Look, Eren, you know me. I'm a realist, a pessimist. Do you have _any_ clue what it's like to have all this hope bottled up inside me?" He reached out a hand to catch a lone leaf swirling from above. "I'd sooner just be certain that things will go one way or another. The chance that Marco might be inside that Titan… means there's a chance he's not, or that he'll never come out. And that's killing me… it really is."

"Then don't make it a matter of chance," said Mikasa. "Whether or not he emerges from his Titan form is up to you."

"What do you mean by that?" Jean asked, his brow furrowing. It was, he thought, a very Mikasa-like thing to say – seize control of your situation, take up the reins yourself. "You think I don't try? If I don't know _how_ to get him out, it doesn't matter how determined I am. Not every problem can be solved by strength of will."

Eren and Mikasa looked at him a little bit blankly.

"Well of course you two wouldn't think that," Jean grunted. "At least Armin's got some sense."

Nothing got past Eren when it came to his best friend. "And that reminds me! Just what have you and Armin been planning?" he demanded. "I've seen you talking a lot in our down time, like you've got some secret you don't want to share with anyone else."

"We're not trying to keep it a secret!" Jean protested, annoyed. "If you'd asked us earlier, we would have told you."

"Maybe _you_ would have," said Mikasa, sitting down on the branch beside Eren, "but Armin's been very cagy about it."

"Well, I don't know why he would be," Jean said, tearing apart the leaf in his hands and letting the scraps flutter away on the zephyrs like tiny winged things. "We've just been trying to pluck up the courage to ask permission from top brass for an investigation into… well… what happened to Marco. Armin thinks it's the only way that we'll be able to understand the Gentle Titan and me…" Jean sighed. "I just need to finally know the truth. For his sake."

"I understand," said Mikasa, and Jean wasn't sure for a moment if he'd perhaps imagined her speaking. He glanced her way and saw that she was looking straight at him; for once, it didn't make him blush or feel inadequate. Then she added, "Pursing the truth is a noble cause, no matter what. But are you sure you really want to know things that might cause you greater pain?"

The question felt like a test. "Isn't that a trick question, though?" asked Jean. "If you don't know or want to admit the true state of things, how do you expect to make the right decisions? And making the wrong decisions will only bring you grief. It's always better to know the truth."

"True," said Mikasa, turning away to stare into the foliage.

Eren swung his legs idly, like a child would. "What about those times when knowing the truth prevents you from action? Isn't it best sometimes to surrender to the task at hand, rather than question everything? Soldiers would never make the sacrifices they do without having faith that they are acting on behalf of humanity."

"If knowing the truth holds you back from doing something," said Jean bluntly, "doesn't that mean you shouldn't be doing that thing in the first place?"

They sat in silence while this question hung over them. It seemed like it was a very simple, immature argument, easy to escape from, but once you shook yourself loose from it and went down corridors of speculation, the problem would arise again, rearing its unpleasant, inconvenient head.

"Eren," said Jean after a while. "Tell me, do you remember anything about… being trapped in your Titan's mind? You lost control of yourself when you attacked—"

"I don't know why you always have to bring that up," said Mikasa coldly.

Jean covered his eyes exasperatedly. "It's because it's relevant to the situation at hand. I need to know how Eren snapped out of it, because if I can do the same for Marco—!"

A grappling hook zinged past Jean at his right and buried itself in the tree. Jean nearly jumped out of his seat, which would have sent him crashing to the forest floor, but Eren quickly reached out a hand and steadied him.

Captain Levi followed close behind his 3DMG hooks, landing neatly against the side of the tree. "Sorry to break up your little chat session," he said, his eyes flashing. "I suppose you brats think this is time to socialize."

"No, sir!" they all chorused, leaping to their feet. Jean was tempted to blame Eren for it, to say that he'd made Jean sit and talk about his feelings, but then he remembered how Eren had reached out to catch him when he'd nearly lost his balance. "It was my fault!" said Jean quickly. "I was performing badly, and I injured myself. That's why these two stopped to help."

"I see," the captain said. "You aren't too injured you can't fight, though, right Kirschtein?"

"No, sir! I can still fight, sir!" Jean tried to stand at attention without wavering on the branch. "We'll perform the maneuver again!"

Eren and Mikasa quickly nodded and Mikasa buzzed away to get into position for their rendezvous. Jean met Eren's eyes for a moment and then, to assure Eren that they were still mortal enemies, he pulled a face. "Let's haul ass," he said.

* * *

Every day, before and after training, Jean went to visit the Gentle Titan, and this was the only time when his focus seemed to turn on. He fixated upon it, breathing in great draughts of detail like a parched desert wanderer at his oasis.

He liked the way the late afternoon light played with the shadows and contours of the Titan's face, making it seem far more alert and expressive than in noon-time. Wind played with the roughly cut black hair, and blew the steam from its cheeks into flimsy corkscrews. The Titan stared off into the distance, as usual, but sometimes it struck Jean as being more peaceful than usual. He stepped closer to it, crossing his arms. "Afternoon, Marco," he said, as per tradition. "Nice day, isn't it?"

The two guards stationed at either side shared a glance full of pity for the young man between them. "You know he never responds to you, right?" said the one. "He never responds to anything," added the other. "It's like standing watch over a tree."

Jean bit his lip. "I know that!" he snapped, jerked from his world that contained only him and the Titan. "You tell me that every day… Can you just let me try?" Approaching the statuesque Titan, so that he was close enough to reach out and touch its pinned leg, he patted its skin, prodded its flesh a little bit. "Marco… buddy… down here. Just look down here."

The two guards rolled their eyes at one another. "You've tried that one before," said the first of them, pulling out one of her blades and beginning to polish it. "Oh, and look. Nothing from the big lump. What a surprise."

Jean's expression twisted into a grimace of tried patience, and he knelt in front of the Titan. "Marco…" he said slowly. "These gossiping old ladies don't think you're really in there… you're not going to let them be right, are you? I dare you to prove them wrong." But dares and challenges, it seemed, were a lost cause. Besides, Jean expected that sort of thing would work on a person like Eren, who only seemed to hold himself together at times through sheer mulishness. Marco was a gentler soul.

Jean would try cajoling, soft words, sometimes harsh ones when his patience was tried. He would try physical contact, he would even try to prod at memories. That day, for instance, he had brought a very special keepsake. Rooting around in his pockets, he withdrew a palm-sized white rectangle, something he'd always called the Ace. It was made of a peculiarly strong yet flexible material, and he'd named it the way he had because reminded him of a particularly thick playing card, one stripped of designs, and because, at least according to Marco, it was a good luck charm.

And even though he wasn't the superstitious sort, Jean could never forgive himself for having accepted it before the Battle of Trost.

_"You always say I'm born lucky," Marco told him as he fit on his gear, smiling in his shy, somewhat self-deprecating way. "But I've got an ace up my sleeve."_

_ For a moment, Jean thought that what Marco had pulled out of his jacket pocket was, in fact, a white playing card, but when he took a closer look, he realized it sported no print or image. "What the heck's that?" Jean said, wrinkling his forehead._

_ "My lucky charm," Marco giggled, rubbing his nose and turning the card over in his fingers adeptly. "It might look blank, but I think, long ago, there was something written on it. If you look closely…"_

_ Jean leaned to the side, his cheek almost brushing against Marco's as the other boy lifted the card up so they could both inspect it. Marco traced a forefinger over the barely visible splotches on the surface of the card, and Jean hesitantly squinted and tried to make out the words. "… Sina?" he said incredulously._

_ "I found it at the base of the wall when I was very little," Marco told him sheepishly. "It seemed like… like the goddess had guided my hand in finding it. Like I was meant to have it."_

_ "You're crazy," Jean said, incredulously laughing. "The wall told you where to find it?"_

_ "I was only a little boy!" Marco protested, but he laughed as well. "I guess it was a little silly, and I don't believe so much in all that anymore, but it does have the wall's name on it… and as long as I've carried it, life for me has been lucky."_

_ Jean shook his head at the ridiculous credulity of his friend. "Marco, that card you've got has nothing to do with it. You've just got a positive outlook on everything."_

_ "Then let me prove it to you," said Marco, with a sly grin. And before Jean could protest, the freckled youth had reached out and tucked the white card into Jean's own breast pocket. Patting the card through the coarse tan jacket, he said, "Carry that around for a day. You'll see! It'll do wonders for you."_

_ Jean protested; Marco insisted. They ended up mock-fighting, ribbing each other and laughing raucously until they left for an early lunch._

_ But they'd never gotten the chance to eat because word had arrived that the Colossal Titan had made a second appearance. Trost was under attack, and being in the top ten, they were both in command of separate units of trainees._

_ And Jean never had gotten the chance to return the lucky card to his friend._

With a flourish Jean held up the rectangle and waved it in the air between himself and the Gentle Titan. "Hey, Marco!" Jean called, with the trump card between his fingers. "You know, I've completely neglected to thank you for this! But I thought now, you need it more than me. Do you want it back?" He wore a hopeful half-smile.

After a pause, he added, "It's your lucky charm, Marco, the card that the goddess Sina gave to you! Or have you forgotten about it already? I always thought that if you hadn't given it to me, you might have lived… but maybe it's also the reason why I've made it this far."

The Titan was unresponsive as usual, and Jean sagged. He'd been so sure that something like the Ace would trigger memories for it… but who was he fooling? If there was anyone left inside the Titan, they were a vegetable. My best friend, he thought, is beyond all help.

A sagging and creaking of ropes pulled Jean out of his misery. "_Look out!_" one of the guards screeched. "It's—!"

With perfect ease, the Gentle Titan stretched itself and the bonds tore out of its flesh, leaving gushing geysers of steam. Jean stood, mouth agape, unable to comprehend what was happening.

"_Kirschtein! Get out of the way!_" The shorter guard was sheathing her blades and making a run for Jean, but the Gentle Titan was having none of this. The sides of its open palms landed hand in the dirt, cutting off the guards and enclosing Jean on all sides. He looked to the left and right at the walls of fingers and then yelped as they dug into the dirt and scooped him off the ground like he was a seedling to be replanted.

"Bad Marco!" he yelled. He tried to balance as he was lifted up to the Titan's eye level but failed, eventually toppling backwards onto his rear end. "Put me down! Stop that!" But inside, though he was terrified out of his wits, he was giddy with joy. Marco had responded! He thrust the card towards the Titan's giant face. "You _do_ remember this, don't you? You're really him! You're really Marco!"

"The Titan's gotten loose!" one of the guards was shouting. "It's got the Kirschtein boy, and it's—" A gasp, and the unmistakable clapping of fists to clothed chests. "C-Commander! What… what should we do!? Do we have permission for a kill?"

Jean ignored them, and as soon as he was close enough, he leaned against the Titan's nose, eyes closed with ecstasy. "Marco!" he laughed, with a whoop of exhilaration as he felt himself whizzing upwards. The Titan was getting to its feet. "Easy, easy, no need to rush!"

"Retrieve our man," said a deep, authoritative voice from far below. "But don't harm the Titan!" The whizzing of maneuver gear followed these words.

The Gentle Titan's jaws slowly opened, letting off a cloud of steam. It almost was as if… "What is it?" Jean persisted. "What do you want to say to me, Marco?" He felt like his smile would split open his cheeks to match the Titan's.

A long breath of air poured out of the Gentle Titan's mouth. If Jean listened closely, he could almost imagine that it might be a word. "What is it!?" he kept yelling. "What is it, Marco? I can't understand you; what _is_ it!?"

"_Wall…_" exhaled the Titan mournfully. Or at least, that's what it sounded like. Its mouth opened wide again, taking a deep breath, and Jean leaned forwards eagerly.

At least, he started to, until he felt a hand on his collar tugging him back. He choked, gagged and then felt a lurch; suddenly, there was a spray of flesh and he was falling out of the Titan's ruined hands. It reached out for him yearningly as he tumbled away from it; then the hold on his jacket collar jolted again and Jean found himself swinging around the Titan to land face-first in the dirt.

Jean spat out soil. "No!" he yelled, pounding his fist to the ground like a frustrated child. "No, no, _no!_ He wasn't hurting anyone, he was talking to me! He—" When he looked up and saw who was standing over him, however, he held his tongue, a little bit frightened by his own outburst. "C-Commander…"

The tumult and confusion that was taking place behind the figure of Erwin Smith made for an interesting backdrop, and Jean focused on that at first. The guards were frantically trying to corner the Gentle Titan, and it didn't seem all that bothered by their efforts. It was almost funny how their hysteria contrasted with its placid demeanor.

"Are you injured?" said Erwin, bringing Jean's focus back to the officer in front of him. "Though I admit that, seen from afar, the Titan did not seem intent on harming you…"

"H-he wanted to talk to me, sir!" Jean blurted out, his heart still pounding violently. "I had showed him a keepsake, and he seemed to react to it, even though he hasn't reacted to anything else!" Belatedly, he added, "No, sir! I'm not hurt, sir."

"_Jean!_" screamed a voice from the direction of the headquarters. Armin was flapping towards them at a hasty sprint. "What happened, Commander? Did the Titan attack him?"

Jean rose to his feet. "No… no, he didn't attack, he just spoke to me—?"

"_Spoke_ to you?" Armin exclaimed, his blue eyes widening. "What did he say? Is he conscious? Is it really… really Marco in there?"

"Just what did you show the Titan to make him so responsive all of a sudden?" Erwin was inquiring, wearing an intense look of concentration. In fact, he and Armin suddenly bore a striking resemblance to one another.

Jean felt cornered by shrewd intellect from both sides. "It was an Ace… I mean, a card… I mean… this." He held up the white rectangle, finding his words coming more and more incoherently. "Marco said it was his lucky charm, and that he got it from the goddess Sina, which probably sounds stupid but it _does_ have the word Sina on it so I can't really blame him for thinking that it—"

"_The Gentle Titan showed signs of intelligence? You can't be serious!?_"

Jean could have sworn he saw Erwin whisper, "Oh dear," under his breath as he turned around.

Hanji Zoe was barreling out of the headquarters, a young man with very tidy brown hair racing behind at her heels. "Squad Leader!" he kept begging. "Please! You really shouldn't be up and about with your wounds still healing!"

Ignoring her assistant, Hanji slid to a halt in front of the Gentle Titan, which was by now partially restrained. "So, you broke out of your bonds!" she said to it, with doting affection in her tone. "I knew we should have tied you up tighter! But that means that you haven't been resisting this whole time! If you'd had a Titan's hunger for flesh, you'd have broken free long ago and tried to devour us!" She adjusted her glasses and then spread her arms wide. "You're either very intelligent or very, very mild-mannered!"

"Leader!" Hanji's assistant moaned. "I haven't finished wrapping your bandages! That burn will get infected out in the open like this!"

Hanji's wounds still hadn't healed? Jean thought, a little bemused. He hadn't seen much of the Squad Leader, it was true, but he'd assumed she was busy with her experiments, like always. But now, looking at her neck, it was clear that, if anything, the burn she'd suffered during their night expedition had gotten more raw and swollen.

"What is that?" Armin asked, pointing at the card in Jean's hand. "May I see?"

The commander had reached for it at the same time. Jean looked from one to the other and then, with an apologetic glance Armin's way, passed it to Erwin, who held it up to the light. "I've never encountered material like this before," he said, rubbing his chin. "It seems like it would be very useful, to be this light and sturdy, yet this flexible. And there seem to be markings on it…"

_Yeah, I could have told you that, Commander Obvious,_ Jean thought, though he didn't dare say this aloud. "I don't know why, but this item, above all else, stirred up a memory in the Gentle Titan."

"It _did?_" cried Hanji, pushing her way into the huddle. "Let me see!" Boldly, she plucked the card right out of Erwin's fingers and lifted up her glasses so she could peer at it intently. "Moblit!" she called. "Get my microscope ready!"

"Y-yes, Squad Leader!" said the young man hastily, with a nervous glance at Erwin to check whether Hanji was permitted to do this. "But shouldn't I cover up your wounds first—?"

"And make sure you've got several colored filters ready so the markings can be easily distinguished!" she continued, oblivious. "Colored filters, an oil lens, and a sheet of paper! And pencils, too, of course… and colored ink… and—"

"I'm sorry, Leader!" Moblit burst out, "But I can't do that!"

This brought Hanji pause. She turned around to face her assistant with a quizzical expression. "Do we not have any colored ink?" the scientist asked innocently.

Moblit took a long, steadying breath. "We have… plenty of ink," he told her. "More than enough. But we only have one of you, which is why I can't let you do anything more until I tend to your injuries." He smiled sheepishly. "You're irreplaceable."

Clever man, Jean thought. You couldn't ever win Hanji over with common sense, but flattery worked on anyone. Hanji let out a long huff of air and then tugged back her collar with one finger, gesturing with her other hand to her neck. "Go ahead," she told Moblit reluctantly, kneeling in the dirt. "But make it quick! I have a gut feeling that this white card holds answers to questions we didn't even think to ask."

With noticeable relief, Hanji's assistant set down the box he'd been carrying, opened it up, and unrolled a length of bandages. While he cleaned them off with rubbing alcohol and then wrapped them around Hanji's discolored throat, the scientist handed the card back up to Commander Erwin. "Permission to investigate the nature of this item?" she asked brightly, and, Jean thought, very belatedly.

"Yes, of course," said Erwin, and he folded his arms across his chest. "Hanji… this young soldier said that the Titan spoke to him."

"Eehhh!?" Hanji's eyes widened, and she made to stand up, but Moblit hastily placed a hand on her shoulder to keep her from doing so. "It _spoke_ to you!? What did it say?"

Jean swallowed and looked back to the Gentle Titan, who was no longer moving, having returned to its mindless state of hibernation. "I can't be sure, but I think it said, 'wall'."

"Wall…" repeated Hanji slowly. "That could mean anything. It could warning us that the wall is broken, for example, or telling us that we should look to the walls for answers, or simply using the term metaphorically, to say that it is prevented from telling us more by a wall in its consciousness." Her gaze pierced Jean. "You knew Marco best. Does this have any significance to you or to him?"

"I… I don't…" Jean struggled through his thoughts. "I don't know why Marco would want to say that word to me! It doesn't… have any particular meaning…" He forced himself to think. "No. That's not true. Marco… grew up in a Wallist community. He said he found this card at the base of Wall Sina during worship, and that the goddess apparently spoke to him, told him where to find it. It has the name 'Sina' written on it, as well…"

Armin held up a hand. "I… believe I have a guess as to Marco's intent," he said nervously. "If you'll hear me out."

The two officers nodded. Armin could usually be trusted to have useful insights. "Tell us what you think," Erwin encouraged.

The blond tactician placed his fingers together. "Marco's one fear in life was dying alone, without purpose." Sadly, he added, "And that fear came true. We don't know how he died, or why, but we do know that his gear was stolen by Annie Leonhardt, and used to kill the two Titans that were being experimented on. This… suggests foul play." His expression became more fierce and focused. "With the reappearance of Marco's apparent Titan form, I believe that finding out the circumstances surrounding Marco's death is of utmost importance to humanity. And since this card, supposedly belonging to Wall Sina, was indicated to us to be important by Marco's Titan itself…"

Jean waited for Armin to finish with bated breath. The kid couldn't possibly be this clever, this sly, this utterly brilliant…

"I think Marco wants us to find out what happened to him!" Armin concluded passionately. "And the place to look would be enclosed within Wall Sina. We can't ask Annie directly, but we can interrogate her comrades in the Military Police about her and possibly find out if she was involved in Marco's fate, and if anything happened to him that was out of the ordinary before he was killed."

Armin, you amazing human being, Jean thought. There couldn't have been a better time or a better way to put the request out there. How fast did the kid's mind have to turn to come up with strategies like this on the spot?

"It would put me in a delicate situation if I was interfering with the Military Police in any capacity," said Erwin, though something in his manner told Jean that he was thinking just as quickly as Armin.

And Armin seemed to acknowledge this. It was like they were holding a separate conversation on their own, without any of the others being able to tune in. "If you sent officers, it might seem that way," said Armin, "But is there anything wrong with a handful of relatively new recruits just trying to seek some kind of closure? Annie was our friend, after all. That's why I'm asking permission from you, Commander, for Jean and myself to go to the Interior with this mission and this purpose."

Erwin half-smiled. "Do you plan on being a commander yourself someday, Arlert?" he said. "As a career path, it might suit you well… I grant you permission to take no more than three of the newer recruits to the Interior with you to…" He paused. "Seek closure with regards to your friend's tragic death. A mission of morale, so to speak."

Armin and Jean glanced at each other, and then they both eagerly saluted. "Yes, _sir!_" they exclaimed.

* * *

I wake, gasping for breath.

There's a word on my lips that spills out in an impassioned whisper. "_Wall_," I say, and shivers play up and down my body.

A figure at my bedside jerks up and then I feel a hand on my shoulder; in the darkness the touch feels electric. "Marco… Are you all right?"

I don't even question the fact that Jean is in my room in the middle of the night. Turning to him, I say, breathlessly, "Did I dream it?"

He looks puzzled. "I don't know," Jean shrugs. "Did you?"

"The wall," I tell him. "Jean, don't lie to me. Did I really hallucin—"

Jean, rather than laughing me off or chastising me for pressing the issue, sits up on my bed and urgently presses two fingers to my lips. I stop moving, stop speaking. It's as if he's pressed a nerve that turned off my ability to move. When his chin falls to my shoulder, his mouth inches from my skin, I realize that my heart is racing wildly.

"What… are you—?" I start to say, though my words are muffled by the gentle pressure on my lips.

"_No_," he murmurs, nuzzling the word into my ear. "_It was real._"

It's barely a whisper; if he hadn't been so close to me I would never have heard. Louder, he says, as he soothingly rubs my forearms, "Don't get fooled by the nightmares, Marco. You'll be okay. I'm right here."

I nestle back into the covers, as if I were allowing myself to be comforted by his words. Inside, however, my emotions are roiling. Should I continue to trust Jean? He knows more than I do, and now I know that he's hid information at least once. But which was the lie, and which was the truth? Was it better to just stop asking? How much would the truth hurt?

Also, why did make me feel so strange, having Jean's face that close to mine?

"Did you have another weird dream?" Jean whispers, in a conversational manner. How can I possibly hold idle chit-chat after the revelation that Jean has provided me? "I thought that book from the library was supposed to keep you from having those?"

"N-no," I say, trying to sound casual. My voice comes out sounding too loud and I nervously cough. "It wasn't really supposed to _stop_ them… just help me understand them. There's some interesting things I learned from it, though… do you want to hear about them sometime?"

"Sure, sure," says Jean dismissively, and I know then that he's back to his old self. "It seemed like pretty crackpot stuff to me."

"It wasn't crackpot!" I insist. "There was some good research in there about the modern ramifications of Jung's collective unconscious…"

"These people can always find research to back up their claims," Jean yawns. "Collective unconscious, huh? That's an old one. So what, are you dreaming somebody else's dreams?"

"No," I giggle. "Well, maybe. Sometimes it feels like that. But… hey, did you know that it's possible to get a whole room of people to think of the same number from one to ten if you broadcast a certain frequency?"

Jean claps a hand to his forehead. "Not that kooky stuff!" he groans. "I remember when that study came out! Bunch of American nuts…"

"There's nothing wrong with them being American," I say diplomatically.

"… probably bought off by the advertising agencies… not that there's anything wrong with being bought off, mind you. Heck, I wouldn't mind if someone offered me a whole bag full of money to fake a few studies—"

"Jean!" I protest, turning pink with earnestness. "I'm being serious!"

"Well, I'm not!" he says, and laughs loudly. "Marco, you're adorable." He smirks and pats my head. "I wouldn't ever sell you out, though. That I _am_ serious about."

"Thank you very kindly," I say, with all the dignity I can muster up. "I'm very glad to hear it." I'm still blushing, though, at being called adorable.

The pretense of being casual to one another has vanished – it's not fake anymore. Jean's leaning over my bed with a wry grin and I'm humoring him, giggling at his words and letting our skin brush in tiny, imperceptible ways, and I'm sure something very… _unusual_ would have happened if we hadn't been interrupted by the window shattering into a million pieces.

Jean throws himself on top of me. I think I screamed, maybe just a little, and that makes him think that I was hurt, and it's all a mess of confusion and dull pain and somehow we end up tangled up on the floor beside the bed, cowering behind it, while the chilly night air spills in through the empty window frame.

I flounder about. "What happened?" I half-shriek. "What broke it? What's going on?" Jean scrambles out of our spot of cover and then comes back with a deathly pallor to his skin.

"_Wandkulter_," he breathes, and I honestly think he's scared for his own life. "There's a riot going on outside the hospital. Don't you dare move, Marco. I'm going to get help."

"W-wait!" I cry. "Why are they rioting? What's going on?"

"You honestly don't know?" he says. I can see the sweat standing out on Jean's forehead in the moonlight. "They think you're an abomination unto God, Marco. They've been petitioning to have your treatment illegalized and your experiment terminated." He looks me straight in the eye. "They want you dead."

And then, Jean makes a dash for the door, leaving me alone in the dark, with a lump of terror lodged in my throat.

* * *

**End Note: By the way, I completely made up that study about frequencies and people thinking the same number and what have you. Most of the science in this one is fairly accurate, but that's all part of the fiction in science fiction.**


End file.
